A Turnabout Toast
by snags
Summary: Post-GS4. Phoenix and Edgeworth, awkwardly and with a lot of help, realize that missed opportunities don't have to stay that way. PxE/EdgeWright/NaruMitsu, eventually. Incidental AxK later on. R&Rs more than welcome; I'm new to this.
1. Distress Call

February 11, 12:45am

The email glowing on the screen and lighting up the office of the Wright Anything Agency was heartfelt - but deranged.

_Nick! Come help me out!_

It's a crisis, man, and maybe I should have waited until tomorrow and just called you, but it's late and my girlfriend's asleep, and I don't want to waste time not asking you while I could be asking you.

Anyway - Please! Come up to Sonoma next weekend so I can talk to you.

Maybe Trucy could stay in Kurain?

I'll buy you booze.

It's a three-day weekend, so it's not like she'd miss school.

Please, man?

Edgey is coming.

Salud! Dinero! Amor! Please!

- Larry

Phoenix Wright pushed himself away from the desk and sighed heavily. He'd gotten used to Larry's appeals over the years, but they had never used to involve traveling further than Lomita or Koreatown. And honestly, since Larry had packed himself off to wine country six or seven months ago, they'd barely been in touch. And he'd started to hope that the man wouldn't need any further rescuing.

But he'd never intended to ignore a plea for rescue, either. And it **had** to be serious, if… _Whatever. Don't really care._

He typed back, all in lower case.

_either phone me tomorrow or buy my plane ticket._

Trucy had already gone to bed, and the apartment was dark, so Phoenix shut down the Little Old Computer That Could and padded off to sleep himself. _So much for noodling on the computer to wind down. _With luck Larry wouldn't call until after the sun had risen.

He didn't get a return call, but when he checked his mail in the morning he found a confirmation number and an itinerary. _Hell._

******

February 19, 2:43pm

The former-attorney-now-god-knows-what stood outside the Schulz airport terminal, almost resigned. _I'd forgotten how pretty it was up here, even when it's cloudy. I don't think I'm very eager to hear what Larry wants, though. And he never managed to tell me what his __**car**__ looks like._ He glanced at each of the approaching vehicles, weighing them against his knowledge of his friend.

A red Civic, kind of old. _Could be, I guess?_ But no, it was driven by a woman with curly hair. A gleaming black livery sedan with tinted windows. _A definite no._ A Volkswagen bus with a sunrise painted on the side. _I hope not. I so very much hope not._ But his speculation was interrupted by a tap on the horn from behind the van, a sound which turned out to be coming from an aged, utterly unhip (but serviceable) Volvo. The vehicle swung up next to the curb, the driver's door popped open, and there was Larry, looking a little thinner and tanner, wearing that same orange leather jacket so ancient it made noises when he gestured. He was grinning and waving and talking already.

"Nick! Yo! Welcome to Sonoma! How was the flight in, dude?" Phoenix answered all of these (Larry, hey, thanks, fine) while they exchanged a quick, loud hug and Larry took his duffel bag and slung it into the back seat.

He had opened his mouth while getting into the passenger side and was about to protest, on principle, but was beaten to it.

"You don't even OWN anything breakable, dude. And hey, who had to come pick your ass up from the airport because you can't rent a nice breakable car?" The leaner man was smiling broadly as he glanced back into the rearview.

Well, his big mouth is in evidence, but he doesn't **sound** upset. And usually it's not hard to tell.

"Larry? What's this crisis I came up here for? You look pretty good, as a matter of fact."

"Aw, that can wait until evening, can't it?"

_You tell me._

"Edgey's not even gonna get in for another two hours, and he'll rent something and drive himself (NOTE, dude, by the way) over the hill. In the meantime, I'll take you past the studio. You need to eat?"

"It couldn't hurt."

"Reach back under your bag then. This is the scenic route."

Phoenix did, a little apprehensively, and found an insulated lunch sack, not quite closed all the way. As he awkwardly pulled it around the side of the seat, though, something smelled good, and he unwrapped the tinfoil almost eagerly.

_Will wonders never cease. A roast beef sandwich._ A really good roast beef sandwich.

The blue car curved away from Santa Rosa, up into the pale green hills. The soft grey sky was almost mirrored by the dirty grey of the highway asphalt, and along the edges of the road were stretches of drier, yellower grass. It was incredibly relaxing, actually. Beautiful, in an indistinct way. _Heh. I guess you CAN take a vacation from nothing in particular. _He felt a little guilty when Larry's voice faded in, obviously already well-settled on a topic.

"...and Teresita's this awesome little town."

_Good for me; at least I'm armed with the knowledge that Teresita is the town and not the girlfriend._

"I mean, it's outta the way. But the wineries keep the tourists coming, and buzzed tourists buy stuff, and we all hang on. Everybody's cool."

"Buy stuff" reminded him of what he'd wanted to ask.

"Larry, you mentioned a studio?"

"YEAH! Yeah, dude, that's where we're going first thing. Your jaw will drop, I promise."

"It looks like a little cottage somewhere in the south of France?"

"It looks like a freakin' garage. French cottages aren't conducive to big old fans and blowtorches, man. Nope, the beautiful in there, I provide." Larry shifted, very abruptly, into an exit lane that took them to a narrower road, pointed straight at one of the higher slopes.

"Teresita's just on the other side there. You don't get carsick, do you?"

"No. What is this, a deer trail?"

"It's the scenic route, man, over the top." Larry rolled both of the front windows down, poked a thumb at the nigh-antique CD player, and stepped harder on the gas, and the car began to climb the grade.

It was easy to fall into the landscape again. Pale grass, grey clouds, the occasional rows of grapevines. Big trees with their elbows bent. A rueful guitar flowed from the speakers and out into the afternoon.

Phoenix had craned his head to the right to follow the flight of a huge flock of crows when the car jerked to the left and crunched onto gravel. Larry had stopped in front of a low bungalow wedged up against a steep slope. A dented mailbox reading Lake Monster in metallic stickers leaned next to the road.

"Lake Monster?"

"You have to name a studio something, dude, and Butz wasn't going to be it."

"Fair." He followed behind, kicking a rock out of one sandal.

There was a huge metal door occupying most of one side of the building, but Larry unlocked a much more normal one on one of the short walls, then reached inside. There was the thunk of an industrial light switch.

"Nick, come on in! Feast your eyes!"

He stepped through the door - and his eyebrows rose. Counters ran around two walls, and another cut the space in half. Underneath them sat cabinets painted military-surplus green, a few with their doors half open. A couple of easels leaned against one wall, and metalworking tools (including the aforementioned blowtorches) occupied much of the counter space and the largest open corner.

But of course, the tools weren't the jaw-dropping part. Hanging from the ceiling, for one, was a fabulous water dragon sculpted in metal and at least twenty feet long, sinuous and sharp and shining in copper and cobalt. Flat landscapes - but in metal, too - hung on the walls. He couldn't help a delighted "HEY!" and a smile when he recognized one of them: there was the clouded grey sky (steel, maybe) countered by the darker and grittier grey of the road, itself framed by dry brush (brass) against the pale green of copper turned almost entirely to verdigris. He expostulated again when he saw, near where the road met the horizon, the oncoming face of a pale blue car. Some other kind of copper corrosion for that color, probably, but WOW.

"Larry. I'm not kidding you. These are AMAZING. I knew you could do metalwork, and I knew you painted, but..."

Larry was absolutely beaming. "You love it, right? That's why no detours. You had to come the hill way before you saw that one."

"I get it. WOW. So these are what the buzzed tourists buy?"

"Even better. These, Nick, are what the SOBER tourists buy. The drunk ones buy the jewelry, though." He gestured to a wooden case on the far counter, which turned out to contain a magpie's treasure of earrings, pendants, rings, and bracelets. Phoenix turned through the clinking pieces in the case, feeling a little like Sinbad. Even if these were just Larry's bread-and-butter work, some of them were better than good. His eyes caught on a robin's-egg blue bracelet with streaks of white along one edge and the dark outline of telephone poles, wires strung between them, on the other. He spun it between his fingers and found himself smiling again when a tiny red balloon, propelled by an invisible wind, appeared in the patch of sky.

"Larry, let me buy this one from you. Pearls has a birthday coming up, and even if it's a little big for her now..."

"No no no! For Pearly, just take it. It's a pleasure."

Phoenix felt extremely aware of his ratty jeans and sweatshirt and hat. "I can't do that. How much?"

"You're going to be like that? I'll tell you what. You buy a round tonight - you let me pick the booze - and I'll pack this to Kurain straight from here."

Phoenix winced slightly. "Your mailbox looks like a truck hit it."

"Ah, that's 'cause one did. I meant from here, town, here."

"Deal. And thanks. This is so much better than anything I was going to find her."

"Say, see anything you want for Trucy, for that matter? Or maybe Maya?"

"How much liquor am I going to be buying?"

"We'll see how much we need, man." Larry winked.

"Anyway...not right now. But I'll shake you down the next time I have one of THEIR birthdays to supply."

He returned to the jewelry case for a few minutes, turning up half a dozen things that would have been perfect for any of the girls, before remembering that the baubles weren't what Larry seemed to consider his best work. He began a circuit of the room, stopping at every piece hanging on the wall. A few looked like pop art, referencing comic books and magazines, and a few were colorful abstracts. But most of them were sincerely and beautifully representative.

Where in his screw-up friend's life had this come from?

He knew that wasn't fair. Larry had always been talented; he'd earned his art degree and he'd been painting, and sculpting little things like clocks, for years. He was just a **flake**, the sort of lovable loser whose stories far outnumbered his accomplishments.

Except now there was this. _Whatever the issue with his girlfriend is, she'd better not be endangering his career now. Now he finally has one._

*******

February 19, 5:58pm

To Phoenix's relief, the B&B Larry had set him up at wasn't overly kitschy. No ruffled pillows, at any rate, and no wicker furniture. There **were** a few grape-festooned statues that didn't seem to know whether they were from Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, or modern Guangdong, but those were mostly in the front yard. He was there only long enough, anyhow, to check in with the businesslike hostess, change his shirt, and drop his bag in his room; Larry had opted to stay out front and try to reach Edgeworth on his cell.

He tugged his hat down a bit as he stepped back out onto the dark wooden porch, and Larry waved.

"Edgey made great time, he's at the place already. Let's go, man, let's go! It feels like forever since we've all been in one room!" _Don't really care._

Phoenix got into the car.

*******

"The place" turned out to be a restaurant and wine bar (of course) even further down the hill than the B&B had been, and in the closest thing Teresita had to a downtown. A minor note of adrenalin had started to sing under his ribs, which was annoying, and so he took it out on his friend with some stupid wisecracks.

"Look, Larry, a traffic light. Who knew there was civilization in this valley?"

"You're an ass, Nick. Especially since we installed that yesterday, just for you."

Larry parked the Volvo, a little optimistically, and strode into the restaurant with a big smile. "Nina!"

He'd gone right past the actual host and stopped a many-earringed young woman wearing all black who was crossing the room. "How's the bartender today?"

"Magnificent, thanks, Monsieur Gauguin. Where's Amy?"

_Amy might be the girlfriend. Awaiting corroborating evidence._

"She's at a thing in Sacramento this weekend. But I want you to meet somebody! Nick, meet Nina, most ruthless bartender in town. Nina, this is Nick Wright, we've been friends since we were kids, he's up from Los Angeles."

Nina was giving him (probably his outfit, really) the once-over with some very intelligent brown eyes. "Hi, Nick. You planning on running away from the real world like your friend here?"

That stung WAY more than it should, but Phoenix kept it back. How could she know? "Nah, I only thought I was an actor for a couple of years."

Larry interrupted. "Actually, Nina, our missing musketeer should already be here. About Nick's height-" He made a fluttering kind of gesture under his chin with one hand. "Wearing a-"

Nina's eyebrows flicked up in recognition. "The Grey Ghost is with you two, huh? Yeah, he's already here. He's in the other room. And that's called a cravat, professor, by the way. Go on back. I'll be right with you." Phoenix seriously considered stomping on his own foot, he was so annoyed with his sudden nervous discomfort. But sandals are not good for vindictive foot-stomping, and he followed Larry through a yellowy archway.

Edgeworth sat at a table near one wall, but he was still outright conspicuous. For one thing, even though he wasn't wearing one of his red suit jackets, he did have a black vest on over a white shirt so crisp it was reflecting more light than some of the halfhearted fixtures were throwing. And he still had that grey hair, which was still gelled into improbability. And he was, as memory said he should be, tall. And radiated a kind of chill.

_Grey Ghost, huh?_ Phoenix scowled internally. _I'm just as tall as he is, but none of the wait staff seem that impressed by me... _He remembered all over again what he looked like - _this persona was intentional, damn it_ - while Edgeworth leaned back in his chair like a visiting prince, half-focused on a glass of something a deep red, not having noticed them yet. And Larry was already wading between other people's tables like some kind of explorer navigating the Amazon.

"Edgey! It's been too long, man!" Larry grabbed Edgeworth's free arm in something that began as a handshake and ended up as and sideways across the table half-a-hug, while the prosecutor - whatever he was now - did his best in a split second to put his drink down without spilling it. Phoenix watched the high edge of the liquid swing in a circle around the inside of the glass, though indeed it didn't spill. And he glanced up from it to realize that his old rival had been looking at the same thing, and now was looking at him.

He decided to use Larry as a benchmark of effusiveness and just reached a hand out. "Miles." Then twitched his cap backwards on his head with his other hand, in case the net effect was sullen.

"Wright." Edgeworth responded not just with a handshake, but with a gracious nod of his head. But his tone of voice was hard to place. Detached but questioning? Cautiously friendly? Disappointed?

_Well - whatever._

Nina appeared again as they were getting settled. "Gentlemen? Or Larry, Nick, and gentleman singular?"

"Or single?" said a blond waitress, passing behind her without looking. Edgeworth grimaced, which Nina registered. With eyes full of sympathy and a voice very much not, she said, "Ignore Cathleen. She really likes vests. That's why we had to give up the valet parking idea."

Edgeworth actually seemed to relax a little bit, and Larry smirked at Nina. "So what did we do to deserve tableside service from you? Don't you have something to go stand behind?"

"This isn't the typical company you keep. I'm waiting for both of them to shrink down, levitate over your shoulders, and start telling you what to do."

Phoenix blustered before he could stop himself. "Hey, who says I'm a bad influence?"

Nina turned and stared straight at him. "Right, Nick Wright, who did say that? You could be some kind of scruffy Franciscan under that nice beanie. Besides, sharp-dressed man and all?"

He realized, but without a retort at hand, that it really wouldn't be a good thing for her to keep going in that vein. Demon Prosecutor. And something about his expression must have been telegraphing STOP, because she switched directions almost immediately.

"Or maybe free will IS your problem, Gauguin. You, sir-"

"Miles."

"Miles here is drinking what is without question the best red we pour that doesn't require mortgage paperwork. Can I help you two catch up?"

"Sounds good." She walked briskly away, and Larry grinned again. If anything, he looked happier and more, well, alert, than Phoenix could ever remember.

"I like your bartender."

To his surprise, Edgeworth chimed in. "So do I."

"You like her because she makes fun of me."

"Probably."

It felt like the beginning of an awkward silence. Larry broke in, however, before the roots grew too deep. "I'm sorry you guys couldn't meet Amy this time. She wanted to meet you, too, she really did, but her work thing was for this weekend, and she HAD to go, and anyway she says hi!"

Somewhere near the end of that speech Nina had reappeared with a bottle - actually two, one already partially empty and no doubt where Edgeworth's head start had come from - and another pair of glasses. This time she left without saying anything. A waiter (**not** Cathleen) dropped off a trio of menus a moment later.

Larry snagged all three glasses, engaging Edgeworth in a brief staring match over his, and filled them to the top. "Down to business! I have a couple toasts to propose!"

Phoenix and Edgeworth looked at one another in a short circuit of uncertainly_. This was always the weird thing about him. You think he's somewhere lost in his own head and he turns out to know exactly what's going on in yours. Not that I guess it's __**that**__ hard, in this case .  
_  
"AHEM!" It wasn't a throat-clearing sound. Larry had just said "ahem." But he continued in a normal voice instead of a projected one. "First, to Mr. Phoenix Wright, recently hero to his city, his state, his country, and - um. And his solar system! Recently hero to all those things for his historical reintroduction of the jury system in California, followed by elsewhere!"

_Followed by __**Nevada**__, Larry. Nevada was next. You've __**been**__ there._

As a summary of recent events, it was kind of feeble, but as a toast it was good-hearted and, he admitted, appreciated. And it was nice to see Edgeworth raise his glass in what seemed like genuine respect before drinking. Phoenix smiled to himself, at least in a small way, and sipped at his wine. It **was** good.

"And secondly, to Mr. Miles Edgeworth, on the occasion of his move back from France to Los Angeles with his charming sister!"

"Cologne isn't in France."

"Europe!"

_He moved back with Franziska? When did that happen?_

He remembered where he was and asked.

"Only three weeks ago. And it's not so straightforward as all that. I'll still be travelling often, but from here to there instead of vice versa."

"All the same, man! Cheers! Moving sucks, but your stuff made it to L.A.!"

"Mostly."

"Mostly!"

That could have gone on forever, probably, but Larry made the wise decision to let it go there and just to take another gulp from his glass, and his old friends followed suit.

"And lastly, to Miss Amy Laura Hayes! A very fine model, freelance writer, and my fiancée!" The artist looked both smug and a little tense.

_He's MARRYING her?_ Phoenix turned in his seat and gave Larry a Serious look. _A bit like the ones I give Trucy, to be honest._ He didn't look at Edgeworth, but he was sure that the other man was making a less challenging face that all the same was indicative of absolutely identical concern.

He was still holding his glass, and putting it down in this context would be rude enough that even Larry would notice. So he drank.

"Congratulations, man, but wow. Your email didn't say anything about that. Did you only propose this week, or-"

"Nah, it's been six weeks at least. I just wanted to surprise you in person!"

"Congratulations," said the serious voice opposite. "Very much so. And we definitely need to hear more about this, but perhaps we should put in our orders first." He pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and flicked open a menu.

_Since when does he wear glasses?_

Phoenix drew the remaining pair of menus across the dark, pitted wood, and slid one to Larry, who happily recommended roast beef sandwiches. He ended up being the only person who actually ordered one, though. A goulash kind of dish struck Phoenix as being more substantial (and more economical), and Edgeworth ordered something that sounded complicated.

Once the waiter had departed, Larry burst into speech again, explaining how he and Amy had met (she was modeling, clothed by the way, it wasn't like that, though life study classes already weren't like that, of course they knew that) and how well they got along (she was so relaxing) and how he'd proposed (at an old drive-in two towns over when they were showing _Casablanca_). Also that it was going to be a long engagement, which was at least less worrisome than it could have been. The conversation was going to have to take an uncomfortable turn soon, but Phoenix stalled the obvious interruption for a few minutes. There was something nice, at least, that he wanted to do on his friend's behalf.

"Larry, I know you have your cell on you. Do you have a picture of Amy's ring - wait, you DID make Amy's ring, right?"

"Of course I did!" Larry was beaming again. "Here!"

"Edgeworth, you haven't been out to his studio yet, but you need to make him show it off tomorrow. Look here. These things are incredible." Amy's ring was no exception. At first glance it looked almost like fabric, so carefully had the metal had been folded and smoothed into the shape of a notched ribbon, marked with a heraldic lion holding a small opal between its paws. It was part medieval splendor and part the bookmark in your favorite book. Phoenix hoped that she'd adored it.

Edgeworth's eyebrows shot up when he saw it, and he turned the phone sideways to make the picture expand. He almost looked touched.

Phoenix added a little splash of wine to the glasses and said, "I propose a toast to the Lake Monster." Edgeworth's eyebrows went up even further at that, and the modicum of sentimentality disappeared in favor of a WHAT look across the table. "That's the name of Larry's studio." The eyebrows stabilized and Edgeworth put the phone down decisively, lifting his glass instead.

"I second the toast, then, and I look forward to seeing the monster's den tomorrow. It's beautiful."

Beautiful was just a funny word to hear coming from Edgeworth, but it was absolutely fair, and Phoenix raised his glass just as high. Larry barely cleared his silverware with his, but he looked gratified. It was strangely adult on him.

They drank. And then Phoenix had to ask. "Look, Larry. So you're engaged. And that's great. And we'd be happy to be happy for you. But we're up here because your email said there was some kind of crisis. I mean, should you be engaged to her? Your life looks - really improved otherwise. Or is it a money problem, or-"

And Larry grinned like a gambler in a cowboy movie, like he'd been WAITING, and shoved his chair back a little bit, and said something stunning.

"Dude. I am so happy, so HAPPY, that you came up here. And Edgey too, 'cause I can hear you thinking everything Nick just said, in longer words. It proves to me what amazing guys, what amazing friends you are, always have been. I mean, I've yelled for help a LOT over the years. Nick, man, my life was literally on the line.

"But I'm FINE. I am better than fine. I'm making a good living doing what I've wanted to do since I was a kid. Though I guess without the laser submarine. I've got a good woman with me, a really good one. And she's my own age, not some twenty-year-old opportunist. I am as grown-up and as good as I've ever been and I ever want to be.

"I wrote what I wrote so I could be sure you'd come. You are FIRST RATE Mighty-Mouse-to-the-rescue guys. You're kinda, debatable, other times, though. When it comes to coming where people invite you."

Phoenix hardly knew what to think, and he risked a glance across to Edgeworth, who looked, for want of a better word, fascinated. Like a professor receiving an unexpected genius essay from a disorganized freshman. Except that he was also giving his napkin a nervous twist. This essay could go anywhere, you got the idea.

"You guys are both brilliant. I was never going to be as sharp as either of you. Wasn't going to happen. But I'm in a good place lately, and I owe you, and I wanted to say this. Today's my chance to be the smartest man in the room.

"Nick, Miles...both of you. GET it TOGETHER. Seriously!" His voice had gone from emotional to awkward and was now taking on an edge of anger. Not fury, but something beyond exasperation. "If I could fix MY life, you can fix yours! Nick, you look like a bum. You do. College kids on laundry day look more together. You're the guy who brought justice back, and you're a LAWYER, except you're NOT, because no one knows WHAT you've been doing with your damn SILLY agency. Your name is CLEARED, if you hadn't noticed. Get your BADGE back. Stop treating your CALLING like it was some kind of teenager PHASE and go BACK TO COURT! Where the people who NEED you are! When did YOU of all people just GIVE UP?"

Phoenix was poleaxed. Larry Butz was lecturing him. Telling him not to be silly, and telling him to grow up. His face slowly flushed, and the sweats and the sandals and the hat began to feel as heavy as upholstery fabric. He looked at the two other faces. Larry's may have been leaner, but it was sharper, livelier, than it was in any of his memories. Time was looking, bewilderingly, good on him. And Miles' face had gone the other way, a bit - the razor lines had blurred, slightly, into a look that seemed more inclined to listen. But he looked good, too. Phoenix imagined the view, to a third party, with his own unshaven face there, and autonomically bent his head to stare at the floor. This particular floor was made of a dark finished wood, but against his will he pictured the blond beams of the courthouse, and what his knee had looked like, in his peripheral vision, in blue wool. He'd been called out on his transformation dozens of times, but now, really, he felt ashamed.

Larry had moved on. His voice was a little gentler, but the things he was saying were just as bare.

"And you. Miles. Edgey. Man... man, you've had some sorrow in your life. Your dad was a good guy." Larry stopped abruptly to raise his glass to where the lights shone off of it. Phoenix had lifted his own glass an instant later.

Miles was a little slower, and the liquid in his glass wobbled more. And there was a pause stretched as narrow as a taut cord before he said, just, "Dad," and held the wine in the light for another moment before drinking.

They drank and put their glasses down then, and Larry started to talk again. "Miles, I feel like a bad guy saying this. But I'm not a bad guy. And I think you need to hear me say it. No one's telling you not to be sad about the sad stuff. But I don't think you let yourself be HAPPY about the HAPPY stuff, and sometimes when you're sad, it seems like there isn't a reason, not that anyone knows about, and I don't know what you DO with yourself all day long.

"When you stop working for the day, what do you even do? I'm sure you've got some really nice furniture, way better than mine, but who ever sits on it? What are you when you're not reading legal stuff at your desk?"

Miles' face had gone very, very hard.

"See. Look. I'm not scared of you doing that, okay? I'm not scared of you because I'm more kinda scared FOR you. Because you don't know how to look after yourself any better than Wright. And everyone who cares what happens to you is STILL freaked out, OKAY, because of the time you told us you were DEAD and we didn't have any reason not to BELIEVE you."

Miles gripped one arm with the other, and turned his head to the side. And the hard look wavered to one of hopelessness and back.

Neither the attorney nor the ex-attorney were able to speak now, and Larry finished his speech quietly and uninterrupted.

"I don't just want you to be all pissed and depressed. That wasn't the point. The point is that you both need, NEED, to live BETTER. Because you can, and you should, and you deserve to. And this is a challenge.

"I moved up here. I got the studio and my whole career launched. And I found Amy. Three things. And none of it just happened FOR me, you know? It wasn't JUST luck.

"So I'm challenging you. Like men."

Somehow the idea of getting told how to man up by **Larry** seemed almost plausible.

"It's Presidents' Day. I, hereby, invite you back up here for Thanksgiving. And before you each come back, I want you to do three REAL things to make your lives what anyone could tell you they should be. You don't have to move. I mean, Edgey just moved already. They don't have to be the same three things as me. But that's what I want. That's the crisis. That's what I want for my wedding present."

A long silence.

"And a toaster."

Phoenix lifted his head. He couldn't read the looks on either of his old classmates' faces. He bet they couldn't read his. But he said, after a pause during which his vocal cords rusted and refused to work, "...Yeah."

Larry was not looking for mumbles. "Is that a yes?"

"YES, it's a yes!" That came out louder than he had intended.

"GOOD!" So did that.

But one person hadn't yet replied, and Phoenix and Larry both looked at Edgeworth. Who made a gesture with one arm that wandered through the air, settled nowhere, and dropped back to the edge of the table. Who said, "God damn it. Yes."

******

Dinner was quiet. Phoenix turned over and over in his head what he'd agreed to. It sounded GOOD, but, said his inner cynic, of course it would. It was vague. It was benevolent and vague and optional really (no, said the inner paragon) and honestly frightening. But the circumstances meant that he'd have to follow through, because - because they'd all been nine-year-olds with funny hair together? His inner cynic got not even half a thought towards suggesting that was stupid before the inner paragon snapped that that was probably the **least** stupid part of his entire life. So he would...what?

Larry wasn't going to actually help. He'd be here in Sonoma.

And Miles would be...where he'd been for the last seven years or more. On the other side of the moon.

He would learn to drive. That sounded like a solid choice. He'd stop relying on Polly and on the LADOT and on the weather. He'd buy a used car.

He'd retake the bar?

_That was a low blow,_ rattled his hyperactive language center, _an inner cynic and an inner paragon were useful, but a rhyming inner Dr. Seuss was a nuisance (A SEUSSANCE!) - shut UP! I'm trying to think! _The bigger, slower thoughts rose up into the silence.

I should retake the bar...

I'll retake the BAR...

The exhilaration that leaped into the last word came as a complete surprise.

He looked up, and straight into Nina's face. He hadn't even heard her come up.

She looked like she'd had some kind of big realization herself, which was weird. He almost asked if Larry had told her about everything, but she started to talk first. "Nick Wright. Nick Wright. I know who you are." She turned towards Edgeworth then. "Which means I know who you are. Even if you should have been the easy one." Then to Larry. "Gauguin, you should have told me."

Larry clearly didn't know how to reply, and her voice had lost its bantering tone. "Told you what, barkeep?"

"About your friends." She took a step back and glanced at all three of them. "Nick. Miles. It's an honor. I mean it."

_She's what, maybe twenty-three? And I've never seen her before today. What's going on?_

"I'm from Santa Monica. I moved up to NorCal for college and never left. But my dad's best friend, my godfather. He was LAPD. Harbor police. And he hated Damon Gant. Was scared shitless of him, too, and he wasn't scared of anybody, normally. So I remember Uncle Rob watching the Skye trial on television with my Dad and how impressed he was with you. He didn't like lawyers much generally. But he thought you were just a couple of kids, and he was crazy impressed. And grateful. Of course, I was in junior high and I thought you were cute but ancient. But since Uncle Rob can't thank you, I'd better do it." And she leaned over, and pecked him on the cheek, and then did the same to Edgeworth. Who didn't even give her a funny look. "And the wine is on me." She went back to the rows of bottles.

Phoenix stared after her for a minute. The inner cynic didn't want to believe he'd just received a cosmic attaboy from a sarcastic omen in four pairs of earrings. So he said, "Hey, Larry, does this mean I'm off the hook for the round we talked about earlier?"

"No! It does not!"

The trip back to the B&B was a bit fuzzy.

He remembered being surprised that Edgeworth was staying at the same place, and not at all surprised that the grey-haired man had disappeared pensively up the stairs almost immediately. His own room was on the ground floor, with a sliding door that led out to the garden.

After he washed his face, brushed his teeth, drank three tumblersful of water, and changed into his pajamas (really just sweatpants and a t-shirt, both with faded writing on them, and not too different from what he'd grown used to wearing in daylight) he'd recovered enough presence of mind to feel rather embarrassed about said pajamas. And about said daywear. He picked up his cell, wandered over in front of the glass door to give himself something to look at, and called Trucy.

She picked up in less than a ring, sounding perfectly cheerful and alert. "Hi, Daddy!"

"Trucy, you should be in bed. It's the middle of the night." With an adolescent daughter had come the ability to hear and recognize the specific silence that comes with an eyeroll.

"And that's why you're calling. Really. You could have woken poor hard-working Pearls."

"You haven't been to Kurain since December. Pearls isn't asleep any more than you are."

"Thanks for calling to say goodnight, though..." The voice was sincere, and he smiled a little to himself. She's **such** a good kid.

"Actually, I had something I wanted to tell you. I'm...I'm going to retake the bar. It's too late for February, so... that means this July."

Silence on the other end of the line.

"And I'm going to learn to drive."

"Have you been DRINKING?"

_OUCH._ He looked at the floor. "Yes, actually. Which is why I want you to tell Maya all about this conversation at breakfast tomorrow and to call me later so we can talk about it."

"I will." A pause. "But Daddy, if you're just drunk instead of serious, I'm going to be...really, really REALLY disappointed." He felt more embarrassed than ever, and he reached over to click the bedside lamp down to a low glow.

"Cross my heart."

"OKAY."

"Good night, honey."

"Night, Daddy."

He beeped the phone off and looked up, and then saw something through the window that got his full attention. Someone was moving outside in the garden, late as it was, heading very quietly down the neat dirt path past the trees and towards a picnic table.

_There aren't any trees shading that. Step out into the moon, why don't you, so I can see if I might need to call the police? _He was glad he'd turned the light down.

It should have been no surprise when the figure beneath the trees turned out to be Miles, whose gray hair was practically white in moonlight.

_Being moody, huh?_

Shocking.

He was a **little** surprised to see Edgeworth sit down at the table, since it had to have been damp and cold, but the body language was otherwise completely familiar. Miles shrugging his shoulders. Miles looking at the top of the table. Miles, looking up at the moon.

Back in the day, Phoenix knew, he'd have practically trotted out the sliding glass door to see if his old friend wanted to talk about something, anything. Back in the day, he'd have been very concerned. He watched Miles tapping his fingers together, lost in thought.

And he stayed exactly where he was.


	2. Disappearing Acts

_**Disappearing Act: Round 1**__**  
**_  
January 5, 6, 8, 2002

The second day that the desk under the San Andreas Fault - Where Is It? Where Are We? bulletin board was empty, Phoenix Wright, nine years old, got a funny feeling in his stomach. But he didn't call Miles after school, because there was a special on TV about sharks.

On the third day, he did call. He didn't invite Larry over, even though Larry was being kind of a pain about wanting to play Scimitar of the Shadow on the PSi. And no one was home when he let himself in with the key stuck to the back of the metal sun-with-a-face with a magnet. But no one answered the phone at the Edgeworths' (310-771-8262) either, except the answering machine with Miles's dad's voice on it.

* * *

"Why didn't you leave a message yesterday? We were only out to have dinner."

"Your dad sounds kinda mad on the answering machine."

"He's not mad. He's **serious**."

"He sounds kinda mad."

"He gets phone calls from lawyers. And clients. And the police. He has to sound **businesslike**."

"But can I still use your answering machine if the police use it?"

"Mmhm. You can."

* * *

He tried again a little while later, and just as he started dialing his mom came home. From the bag rustles and the sounds of bumping things on the counters, he knew she'd been to the grocery store. And when she came around the corner into the front hallway where the phone was, she looked surprised to see him holding the phone up to his ear and not saying anything, and she said, "Is someone on the phone?" And when he didn't answer, the way she didn't answer when he would come up to ask her questions while she was talking on the phone to somebody, she said again, "Nicky, who's on the phone? Let me talk to them-" and by that point Mr. Edgeworth's voice had come on and gone off and the beep had beeped, but he hung up to answer his mom. "I was calling Miles. He's not home though."

And she got a look he didn't understand. She said, "Sweetie, come sit on the couch."

And his dad came home a few minutes later, which was early.

* * *

He asked, "Can we adopt him?" And his mom looked at his dad, and his dad said Miles was already adopted. He asked by who, and it was another lawyer. And he asked where he was going to live, because he wanted Miles to still go to Serra Magnet and not private school or Sepulveda or something. And his dad said, he's going to Germany. His mom started to cry a little and said something under her breath and Dad turned to look at her and said something back and they started to argue and Phoenix scrambled back to the phone, where there was still no answer. And then he went back into the living room, where his parents were still muttering to each other, and sat down next to the bottom bookshelf where the books no one ever read were.

He wrestled out the atlas, and looked for Germany. And it only looked like a page away, until he looked back and saw Texas, where they'd been on vacation last year. Which had been days and days. And Texas was still a lot closer than Germany, even if you didn't count the ocean. And he got angry, and started to cry, and dragged the atlas over by the phone and called, over and over and over and over.

* * *

His parents kept him home the next day, but on Friday, when he went back, he was shooed out onto the playground at recess instead of being allowed to stay in when the teacher found him sitting on the floor to look into Miles' desk. All that was in it was a sharp pencil and a blue rubber band. He took both when she wasn't looking.

Out on the blacktop, he sat down next to a stucco wall and twisted the rubber band around the pencil. Twist, twist, twist, propeller propeller propeller until the last twist came undone and he'd have to catch the pencil before it hit the ground.

"Yeah, that was him, on TV in the police car!" A couple of boys from the other fourth grade walked up and stopped.

"Hey Nick. The teacher said Miles isn't coming back. I bet you're sad. "The boy looked kind of happy about it. "I bet you're REALLY-", he started to say, and Phoenix punched him. And he yelled, and his friend punched Phoenix, and the teacher and the monitor on yard duty had hauled them apart before Larry even got there.

And he was taken to the principal's office, which had never happened before. But he knew all about it from Larry, who was probably sent every two weeks. He was pretty sure, from all the stories, that it didn't normally mean that the secretary brought you a paper cup of water and looked like she felt sorry for you, and that the principal called your mom from the back office, while you sat on the bench in the front one, and didn't say anything TO you at all.

When he got home he left his math book in the car on purpose, and ran to the phone while his mom was out in the driveway again getting it back. But this time there wasn't even an answering machine anymore.

* * *

_**Disappearing Act: Round 2**_

March 17, 8:43am, 2017

Phoenix woke in his office, to what he too slowly realized was the ringing telephone. On its last ring, too, and the caller opted not to leave a message, so he was left awake but dazed at the lingering noise and the strange quality of the light in the room. He swung his legs down to the floor next to the office couch.

The weird light was in part due to the television, which had been left on, albeit with the volume all the way down. A Steel Samurai DVD menu was displayed, and the same clip of Will suited up and shouting and slashing an overdressed naginata down at the camera played on a loop on the left hand side.

That was right. The DVDs had been rushed onto the market in an admittedly tasteless attempt to capitalize on the scandal of the trial, and after a while Will had remembered Maya and sent a set to the office. And of course she'd wanted Nick to stop working right away and watch the whole thing with her, since she'd only been in town for a couple days and was leaving the next morning, and he'd insisted on finishing his paperwork first, and so the samurai marathon hadn't started until seven. And it had run until three in the morning, until Maya had realized that her train back home really did leave at six, and she hadn't yet packed or arranged for a cab. All in all it wasn't surprising that the disc had been left behind.

The rest of the curious light was coming in through the windows. It was one of those rare cloudy Los Angeles mornings where pale beams literally streaked through gaps in the grey cumuli, visible almost all the way to the ground. _Pretty._He looked at the clock below the TV. 8:45 am. Not nearly enough sleep. But rather than the muzzy-headed and irritable kind of tiredness he was used to, he felt mostly wide-eyed and slow.

The phone rang again, and he answered, pleased that the words came out in the right order.

"This is Phoenix Wright."

Silence. He tried again.

"Good morning. This is Phoenix Wright."

A ragged voice on the other end. "Pal."

"Detective?" Gumshoe usually YELLED hello.

"Pal."

"Yes?"

"Pal. I think you need to come down to the Prosecutor's office."

Adrenalin burst in his abdomen. "What did I d-"

"It's not you, pal." The detective sounded glummer than Phoenix had ever heard him. Low indeed.

"Detective, can I do anything for you?"

"**JUST GET DOWN HERE!**" That stab of fury wasn't like Gumshoe at ALL, and the nerves that had selfishly quieted when he'd been told it wasn't him who'd screwed up lit up again, many degrees colder.

"Is Prosecutor Edgeworth there?"

"**NO-**" and the phone slammed down on the other end.

It hardly felt like the same room. Phoenix, still holding the receiver, told his inner monologue to not breathe a word, **not one word**. He got dressed, knotted his tie, called a taxi, and picked up the briefcase that the sudden twist in his stomach seemed to think might not be necessary. He rode through the strange grey-and-gold morning into downtown Los Angeles in the cab, allowing himself no thoughts beyond a shapeless and roiling concern. The gust of cold wet air on the concrete steps of the Prosecutor's Office, when he was deposited there, felt like a warning shot.

He shoved through the heavy wood-and-glass doors and jumped to join an elevator full of people headed to Edgeworth's floor. Why? Gumshoe hadn't mentioned a floor. This was just the one he'd always gone to before. The twist in his stomach told him that maybe he would have done just as well to wait for a different elevator.

Because something was going to hurt.

And despite the muzzle he'd put on his normal train of articulated thought, he was in the beginnings of a quiet panic by the time he got off of the elevator.

Edgeworth's door was wide open, which seemed wrong. So did the sounds coming out into the hall. Which was why, for a moment, the normalcy of the office itself filled him with relief. No yellow tape, after all, and no debris. Nothing that made it look like a **scene**, instead of a real place that was part of the normal scheme of things.

There was Gumshoe, though, sitting at Edgeworth's desk - and surely that was wrong. Edgeworth's rather shy secretary, whom Phoenix had the faint idea that he liked, was nervously leaning over the detective's shoulder, looking and pointing down at something and **sniffling**. Someone from the department with a lab coat and a badge was poking around. The curtains were closed. And Edgeworth wasn't there.

He very much didn't want to say anything. But the lab coat person said, "Excuse me, sir," and stepped over to open the tiny closet by the door. And that made Gumshoe and the secretary look up.

Except that Gumshoe was looking at him while the secretary looked past him into the closet first, strange, and then the former said, "Pal."

And his voice wasn't angry. It was dejected again, even worse than it had been when he'd called, and he gestured Phoenix over to the desk as the secretary walked away in that particular too-fast way with her head down. When Phoenix had taken her place, the big man lifted his hands up and away from a piece of paper, like a slow and helpless version of a magician saying voilà.

_Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death._

It said. _Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death_, it said. It had been folded and unfolded and it said _Prosecutor Miles_...

"...what?" He hadn't even been aware he was speaking, and it came out jagged and breathy and not very loud.

"It was on his desk this morning, pal."

Phoenix remembered what Ema had said the first time he'd been in this office (3.23 seconds) and exploded away from the desk over to the window, pulling the curtains aside, kicking aside a vaguely familiar box that he didn't have time to think about right now, and feeling the glass. It wasn't broken. Which for a moment made him feel like he'd caught someone in a lie, and that it might all be okay, until what Gumshoe had been saying caught up with him.

"We did check the security cameras in the garage. He was here...early this morning, and then he left again. And he's not at his apartment. Or at the Von Karma house. But the car turned up at Dockweiler Beach, in the public lot with the driver's door hanging open..." And Gumshoe was looking at him like HE was supposed to solve it now, which was suddenly infuriating, and he spun on his heel and strode over and grabbed at the note. Only to have the lab coat person snatch it up from below his descending hand and seal it into a plastic baggie, and hand it back to Gumshoe, who handed it back to him. He pelted out the door and down the hallway.

The ocean and the grimy sand had probably looked very pretty under the gray clouds and the rays of sun. And Damon Gant, asking everyone about **swimming**.

Damn Gant. Damn Von Karma. Damn Edgeworth. **DAMN** Edgeworth. Damn Phoenix himself, for not anticipating, damn Lana, **DAMN GANT**, damn Los Angeles so beautiful under the dark clouds...

Damn Von Karma. Damn Manfred. Phoenix was in a mood to be an architect in Hell.

He remembered exactly nothing of his trip back to the office. The office, because going home would mean that the day had ended and history had recorded its events for good. He pulled the cord out of the telephone. Looked at it wide-eyed. Put it back. Turned back towards the couch, watched Will on the television jerk from the end of the clip back to the beginning and swing his blade down at the viewer. Saw a white cardboard box on the floor nearby, the one that Will had packaged his gift in, and recognized what he had kicked in Edgeworth's office. Kicked this one to pieces. Dropped onto the couch, and slept.

Late at night, he opened his eyes and saw something, through the doorway, on the floor in the front room. Something sort of red, with a shape he couldn't interpret. He looked down at it. Something resolved itself as a sleeve, and it was Edgeworth's jacket. He grabbed it and yelled, and it was heavier than he expected - it was soaking wet. And when he dropped it back onto the floor, he saw that his hand was as red as the fabric.

He opened his eyes again. It was late at night, and he was still on the couch in his slacks and jacket and dress shirt and tie. The door to the front room was closed. And it was grossly unfair to wake from a nightmare to realize that wakefulness was worse.

He'd had bad dreams during Edgeworth's trial, too - they'd be walking with Maya down a hallway or up a flight of stairs in the courthouse, or towards one or the other of their offices, or once even down the hallway of Building 2 at their old elementary school, and the grey-haired man would turn around as if he'd thought of something right then that he wanted to say, and then his mouth would open and his eyes would get big, and before he could get a sound out he'd drop into a great black gap that would have appeared in the floor under his feet. And he'd always fall too quick for Phoenix to be able to grab his arm and haul him back. Phoenix had woken up several times in mid-shout, with one arm stretched out.

Of course, it paled in comparison to murdering your father every night for fifteen years.

But there was the enormity of it. Von Karma's nightmare machine should have been broken. These were supposed to be the days in which things got better - but the future, as Phoenix had understood the future, was now a small and impossible figment lodged in the past. Without it, he didn't have any idea where he was supposed to go.

He fished a box of over-the-counter cold medicine out of a desk drawer and swallowed a dose, gulping it down with the help of one of the miniature bottles of water that Mia had bought in flats to have something to offer clients. He knew he wasn't sick - he just wanted to sink deeper than the dreams could follow. With that thought, a single perfectly clear moment of sympathy washed up like a Pacific wave, and his eyelids got heavy again.

Another three days went by. He didn't leave the office, didn't do much but sleep. He let the newspapers pile up on the front steps of the building rather than go down the stairs for them, even though the subscription was billed to Mia's office. He knew that if he saw Edgeworth's picture on the front page of the Times, he was likely to hurl the paper back like a missile at the carrier - even though the "paperboy" was a soft-spoken middle-aged man from Veracruz who drove a pickup truck. Phoenix had come by the office early a few days before Christmas so he could tip the man in person. He waited for Gumshoe to phone; Gumshoe didn't phone.

He finally went home when he realized how hungry he was, and that he smelled. The effort involved in gathering up the little water bottles and shreds of cardboard box felt literally Olympic, like something out of Greek mythology, and it took far longer than it should have. And it took him several minutes to gather up the nerve to put the note in its baggie into a folder. He opted to walk all the way home, because it still felt as though closing the apartment door behind him would finalize the last few days. The sun was brilliant, it was a Saturday, and it was nearly noon.

In the end, it wasn't closing the door that did it. The red light on his home answering machine was blinking, he saw as he entered, and he just shoved the door hard enough behind him for it to swing shut on its own and reached for the button. There was a message from Gumshoe, from yesterday morning. They had found nothing, they had stopped looking.

And Phoenix was alone in his apartment, while Miles was nowhere. Miles was alone in the Pacific. If that wasn't a thought to make you sick, a thought that could drive you to drink. But it was the realization that there was no reason not to call him Miles now that he'd gone that finally drove Phoenix to sit down at the table and cry, hopelessly, into his arms.

* * *

Nearly a week went by, and he reestablished his routine, but he hardly spoke to anyone. No one came to the office. He found himself staring at the strangest things - at cars, at birds, at plants, at the mailbox. He found himself wondering what the first thing he'd actually say out loud would be.

On Friday morning, as he opened the door to the office, it turned out to be "Hi, Mia." It was a whim born of sadness. The two rooms remained quiet, of course, and his voice had sounded funny, scratchy with disuse. But it was as if the mere act of speaking her name caused some dormant machinery in his brain to warm up. He felt almost anticipatory as he retrieved the mail, watered Charley, turned on all the lights. And when the little tasks were completed and nothing had come to him, he sat at the desk, Mia's desk, and turned the two words over in his mind.

_Hi, Mia. Hi, Mia. Mia is dead. But I greet her. Hi, Mia. My mentor. I will always love you and respect you, always. Mia, hi, Mia. And it's not as though you don't visit, as if I can't speak to you for real if I -_

He lunged forward and banged his knuckles getting the file cabinet open. He grabbed the baggie, shoved it into his coat pocket, turned the DVD player on and grabbed the disc out as soon as the machine responded to his commands, leaving the tray hanging open. He locked only the bottom lock on the door, tore down the stairs, ran outside. And just as he might have had to stop and consider what next, a yellow cab turned the corner and pulled up in front of the Gatewater hotel to let someone out. He pelted across the street, thumped the taxi's hood with one hand harder than he meant to, and told the driver, Union Station.

"You got any luggage, man? You scared me, banging on my car like that."

"No luggage. Sorry."

"It's okay...you in a real hurry, though?"

Tightly. "Yes."

"Okay, hold onto your, you don't got a hat. Hold onto whatever you got!"

A wallet, a ring of keys, a loose DVD, and a baggie.

The big Crown Vic made excellent if uncivil time, dropping him off at the main entrance on Alameda. And the electronic board above the ticket counter informed him that he wouldn't be lingering here, either; instead there was barely time to pay for his ticket and run, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the floor, towards the tunnel for the tracks. He didn't have time to think about what he was doing. He had a mental image of what he must look like to everyone else in the station, though, as he ran through its stagey mix of Mission and Art Deco flourishes. A tall, tired man in a rumpled suit, with a fierce last-minute-or-already-too-late stare, running for a train. Like a piece of film noir.

He made it to the platform in time, and began the last leg of the trip to Kurain.

* * *

It was overcast when he arrived at the manor, having walked and run from the station rather than lose the momentum he felt by trying to call. So when he arrived, of course, they weren't expecting him.

"Maya," he said to the woman who had come to the gate. She looked at him questioningly.

"I'm Phoenix Wright. I need to see Maya Fey."

And apparently she'd mentioned him, because the gatekeeper left him in the care of another anonymous woman and disappeared up the path at a good clip.

Maya came back down without her, and her face was better than a mirror would have been as she approached. Her initial look had been part pleased and part curious, but the closer she came the more concerned she looked and the faster she walked.

She hugged him first, as the gatekeeper withdrew to a respectful distance, and said, "Nick? It's WONDERFUL to see you so soon...but you didn't say you were coming...and you don't look so wonderful."

He handed her the DVD, covered with fingerprints by now. She took it eagerly, then noticed the state it was in, and was obviously about to make some kind of tart remark when he handed her the baggie, too.

She closed her mouth and took it, momentarily mystified and flattening the plastic under her fingers to read what was inside. She recognized evidence bags by now.

"I need you to-"

But she'd read it, and that was as far as he got before she had her back to him and was saying something in harsh and brittle Japanese to the gatekeeper, who hurried off wide-eyed. He wondered what she'd said, but not enough to ask.

She set off up the path then, walking so quickly that he had to trot to keep up, no matter how much shorter she was. She wouldn't look at him, either, and wasn't speaking. He followed her between the sparse garden plots, into the main hall, and around corners into a tiny storage room that was all dark wood and narrow shelves to the ceiling, where she immediately knelt to the floor and pulled out two bundles of fabric, one white and one black. The former she unwrapped partway, apparently unsure whether it was the right thing; when the contents turned out to be a pile of narrow cloth strips of a blue so faded it was nearly grey, she seemed satisfied and stood up so rapidly that she nearly smacked into him as he looked down. And again without speaking to him she pushed back out into the corridor, handing the white package and its odd contents to a woman who might have been the one to fetch her. The two exchanged short phrases in Japanese, the other woman hurried off, and then Maya turned and led him toward the channeling chamber.

_I knew Maya_, he thought. _This is the Master._

But she did speak to him, once they'd gone several yards without seeing another person.

"It's...awfully sad. I'm so sorry for him and for you. Poor Mr. Edgeworth."

He didn't reply.

The candles in the chamber had already been lit, and after Maya closed and locked the doors behind them, she shook the black cloth out into a robe, longer than her usual ones and stiffer around the shoulders. He wondered if it was for him, but she put it on, covering the colors of her own attire, and knelt to the floor. He followed.

As she began the murmured chanting of the ritual, he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to ask or what he wanted to say. As remote as the adult Edgeworth had always been, Phoenix just wanted to grab him and keep him from leaving, to hit him, to hear HIM say something. The air in the room became motionless, and seemed to swell, and in the last instant he was still torn between a stony hello and "Why didn't you **WAIT**", until Maya screamed.

It was pain, not horror. His job had taught him the difference between the initial intake of breath that indicated fear or dismay and the more immediate response to physical hurt. He was halfway across the mat to her when the air pressure dropped to normal and Maya - definitely Maya, with no visitor behind her eyes - slumped sideways.

"Maya! Are you all right?"

Her face wasn't blank; there were so many emotions snarled together that her expression was the equivalent of white light.

His nerves demanded some kind of answer. "Maya. What was that? I've never seen that happen."

"I must have been misinformed." He could barely stop himself from bellowing at her to explain. She was clearly trying to put her words together properly.

"Channeling brings the soul of the channeled into the body of the channeler. But souls that already have bodies don't move so easily."

What did that mean? He wanted her to say it.

"Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, after he wrote that note, he DIDN'T kill himself. That was his pain, the feeling of having your soul pulled out, that you heard. He's still alive."

And now that he knew, the mix of emotions on her face was easier to sort out. Hope. Relief. Anger. Concern for him, Phoenix.

He could barely bring himself to say a polite goodbye before going down the hill to the train station, though he knew when she'd next be visiting.

The next time he was at the police station, he went up to Gumshoe's desk without saying hello, and dropped the baggie onto his desk in disgust.

* * *

_**Disappearing Act: Round 3**_

April 19, 8:48pm, 2019

"Dis**BARRED**?"

Miles Edgeworth wasn't just outraged, he was incredulous.

"How could you **POSSIBLY **have been disbarred?"

...

"From a little girl."

...

"Littler than usual."

...

"Wright, how could you have accepted something potentially so significant under such peculiar circumstances?"

...

"You have a point. But what did the board say to you?"

...

"Wright, there is no such thing as 'sort of' unanimous."

...

"Only one? Who?"

...

"**WHAT?**"

...

"I had expected you to say Maclean or Soto. I've met Gavin in court. He's not the most sympathetic of men." _He makes my skin crawl._

...

"Unctuous, I think is the word."

...

"Good luck with your disappearing defendant, Wright. I have someone else to talk to as soon as is possible."

And he hung up the phone. He had the vague idea that he ought to have been more sympathetic, but he wasn't very **good **at being sympathetic. And everybody else in Wright's little circle, with the exception of Franziska, was.

Gumshoe, Larry, and Wright's assortment of gals Friday-and-all-the-rest-of-the-week would bring him beer, and make supportive remarks, and take him out for terrible food.

Edgeworth would willingly be the one who looked into the abyss. He went for his car keys and drove to Kristoph Gavin's office.

* * *

The building's hallways may have been bright and clean, but they were also windowless, narrow, and convoluted.

_I'm sure that if I'd played more computer games in college, I'd be feeling nervous right about now._

Gavin's lights had been on, he had seen from the outside, so he didn't bother to knock once he reached the door with the correct nameplate. The knob, as he'd expected, twisted silently under his hand.

And Gavin was sitting in the chair facing the door, smiling mildly.

"Prosecutor," he said. "I knew you'd be along."

It took only an instant for the startle to fade. No need for a polite preamble, then. "Of course you did, Gavin. It was insulting."

"Oh, you're not the only one entitled to feel somewhat insulted. After all, your realizing that I wanted to have this conversation was contingent on your already not liking me very much."

"And now that I'm standing here?"

"Won't you sit down?"

"I will not."

"And you wouldn't like to continue this in a less weighted location? May I buy you a collegial drink somewhere?"

"No."

"Have it your own way." He put his hands onto his knees and leaned forward. "I don't think you're a good sort of friend for Mr. Wright to have."

"I beg your pardon." Edgeworth's voice was a river on the verge of freezing, but his pulse had jumped at Gavin's words.

"Simply what I said. His reputation, up, regrettably, until today, has been an impeccable if very strange one. Yours, on the other hand, is more or less permanently shadowed. If he wishes to regain his place in the courtroom, he simply cannot do it while keeping company with the Demon Prosecutor. And at any rate, I'm quite sure that being his **friend **is not where your most genuine instincts lie. It's very duplicitous, really."

Gritting his teeth, Edgeworth stared down at the blond man with an expression that had made witnesses literally tremble.

"Oh, **come** now. You and I are almost **certainly **the two gayest larks in this city's legal system. I'm sure you aren't so oblivious as to think me incapable of recognizing it."

"I exempt you, Kristoph."

"You EXEMPT me?"

"I may be insulting you further with this observation, but that risk doesn't trouble me badly - I have great difficulty imagining you loving anyone."

"Ah, but the hormones pick a direction, don't they..."

They stared at one another. Edgeworth's look was one of steady loathing, he knew. He'd seen it in photographs. Kristoph's, though, shifted like the colors on a pigeon's neck. It was part scorn, part quiet amusement, and part the curiosity of a boy dismantling a live insect. And on top of it all, somehow, **invitation**. It was oily, a few degrees shy of room temperature, and absolutely repellent.

After a few seconds, Kristoph turned his head away and leaned back with the calm, barely bothered air of a man who'd just tried to open a door with the wrong key.

"...and you have an **excellent **imagination."

Edgeworth caught his breath. "Gavin. You've as much as admitted to costing the most ethical attorney in Los Angeles his badge on an ethical violation. And you've indicated that you'd like to discuss this. But so far you've had very little of substance to discuss."

"I told you to stay away, Prosecutor. I think perhaps I hear Europe speaking into your ear."

"I announced my intention to again make Los Angeles my permanent residence less than two weeks ago."

"Reconsider."

"This situation itself would have brought me back from Europe had I not already been here."

Gavin seemed to be losing his patience at last. "I can make your life a very difficult one, Prosecutor. If the intimation that Wright's badge might be as readily restored as it was removed wasn't enough carrot for you, do consider the stick. Think for a moment what a unified pet Bar Association board might make of your early career." He smiled. "Though of course, the idea of such a board being less than impartial is an abhorrent one."

The next sentences should have been difficult for Edgeworth, but to his surprise they came out easily. "I imagine I deserve some anguish for my actions during those years. You can't run me off with that sort of threat."

Kristoph looked delighted. "What a surprise to everyone! Pink jackets and cravats and there's a **ROMANTIC** under them!

"No, Edgeworth, I wasn't finished. I thought your concept of yourself as Wright's self-destructive black knight might permit you to suffer nobly for his sake. But think of the cases that you and he partnered on."

He paused for a moment. "A little pang there, Edgeworth, I'm sure.

"At any rate, if you and Wright are **both** disbarred, just think of all of the good people who would be entitled to a fresh appeal. And of all of the good people who would be under scrutiny again. Think of Will Powers and Maya Fey. And Engarde. And **do **think of Damon Gant. Once everyone was convinced that the public faith in your joint exercises was misplaced, just imagine the scars we could reopen." Kristoph flexed his own wounded hand. "Think of poor, maligned Manfred, getting his name cleared ever so slightly too late."

And Kristoph's brother was the star of the Prosecutor's Office. Edgeworth couldn't speak.

"You see, at least **one **of the twin pillars has to remain intact if these people are to continue as they are. And it really is a glorious joke that the remaining pillar turns out to be YOU.

"Enjoy this, Edgeworth. All this time you thought you'd redeemed yourself. And now the miracles of your later career aren't just a response to its earlier evils – **they're dependent on them**.

"And don't think that I haven't considered the possibility of your running to Wright and explaining everything, instead of back to Europe like a good little boy. I'll be keeping a very close eye on him. I think I'll be his friend. And if I get the idea that he's anything but tremendously disappointed in you, we'll start with you and move right on to Maya Fey.

"I can see how this might be stressful...but he might redeem even **me**. He has that effect on people. Or, you know, you could always kill yourself again."

Edgeworth was angrier than he'd ever been in his life. _But I can't __**do**__ anything to him. I just have to get out of his office before I can make another move._ "I think you have made yourself quite clear. Good night." He turned around. _Two steps. Reach for the door._

"You've forgotten something, Prosecutor." And with that, Kristoph dove at him, out of the chair he hadn't budged from since the conversation began (_my God, he's fast_), shoved him back against the closed door, and gave the lapel of his jacket a violent yank. Edgeworth's cell phone jumped out of the inner pocket and both men lunged for it. But Kristoph was closer, and his arms were longer, and in one easy motion he scooped it up and smashed it with the heavy statuette of Blind Justice that had been sitting on the side table. "Of **course **you were recording me, Miles. I'm glad to see I didn't underestimate you. Good night."

* * *

April 20, 10:49am, 2019

"What do you mean, you're going back to Europe?"

He couldn't meet Wright's eyes. Muttered something about research.

"Edgeworth, if I...now is when I need you."

And he wanted to explain, and he pictured Wright trying to lie to Gavin, and then pictured Maya, and Will, and Gant.

He muttered something very similar about research, and Wright looked agonizingly disappointed. He already looked like he'd slept in his clothes.

"Wright, I **can't** stay." _And that's all I can tell you. Please, please, realize how little I'm saying and puzzle this out the way I've seen you do so often...  
_  
But Phoenix seemed to have already stopped being a lawyer, and his blue eyes looked cynical.

"Well, go then. Bon voyage. Read a good book for me." He paused, a pause that turned out to be the length needed to weigh a metaphorical dart. "I can't say that I understand how this can STILL come as such a surprise."

* * *

April 22, 5:04am, 2019

Franziska had picked him up from the Lilienthal airport in Berlin, although he'd tried to point out that it was too early in the morning for her to need to do that. Most of his things hadn't even been shipped to Los Angeles yet, and it had been simple enough (in a sense) to stop them being shipped at all, and so he wasn't traveling with all that much - but his sister took the larger of his two large suitcases away from him when she found him at the luggage carousel.

She hadn't wanted to talk too long over the phone, but she let him explain all of it in the car as they left the city. He did, carefully, as though he were handling something with a broken bone, and she said, "Little brother. You should never have agreed to stay."

He glanced up to her eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I am not saying that I don't comprehend your foolishness. Just that I cannot help but deplore it. Look where it got you."

He turned his head to look out the window.

"Stay with me. There's more than enough for you to do in Germany." A soft, wry tone came into her voice. "And plenty of perfectly good men I'm not using."

"Actually, I had been thinking of France."

"Pervert," said Franziska, and put one of her leather-gloved hands gently over his.

* * *

_**Disappearing Act: Bonus Round**_

February 20, 1:17am

Light from a sinking moon poured through the first-floor window of a bed and breakfast in Sonoma, and Phoenix Wright shook himself out of a memory of walking away from Gumshoe's desk, and a concurrent echo of the sound of his own office door closing. Staring at someone lost in thought, it turned out, was a great way to get lost in thought yourself. He looked again at the picnic table out on the wet lawn, only to see it empty.

_You got me again._


	3. Skeletons

Author's Note:

Going forward, this is dedicated to KatrinaKaiba, ziraulo, and Celestine. I don't know who any of you lovely people are, but your kind words and attention are SO very much appreciated.

* * *

February 20, 4:52pm

Phoenix returned to Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon, on the flight Larry had booked for him, and caught the bright blue Flyaway bus from LAX to Union Station. He leaned his head against the window, even though he knew perfectly well not to, and turned that flabbergasting evening over and over in his head.

So what if that was a Sesame Street word. It fit.

It was a kind of inner upheaval he hadn't felt for a long time. Losing his badge, acquiring Trucy, the final denouement of the Gramarye/Misham/Gavin legal saga - all of those had flipped the board, sure, but they had also been events he'd mostly needed to RESPOND to. (Or, he admitted, basically fail to respond to, in the case of that last one. How many months had it been?) Now the change was up to him.

Make your life better. By late November. With the following ingredients. There really was kind of a cooking show, Rube Goldberg quality to it. It was thrilling. It was making him very, very nervous.

Nervous enough to nearly walk away from the bus without his duffel and without paying for the trip, which got him scolded by the driver and the ticket booth person and one of his fellow former passengers. _Not my fault this bus works backwards._

Trucy's train down from Kurain had already arrived, and he found her at the station pretzel stand with a green paper cup of lemonade and grease on her nose. He put his bag down to give her a hug, and they walked together towards the main entrance, though a sidelong glance at the big dark Art Deco benches momentarily spun him into memory and left him half expecting to see his own younger self racing straight at him down the same hall. He sped up to reach the doors a little sooner, aware that he'd missed some of Trucy's introductory chatter. Getting out under the hazy sky felt better.

"Daddy, can we go to that place on Olvera Street before we go home? PLEASE? It's only a couple of blocks...and that cool skirt with the skeletons on it might still be there-"

"The last time we were there, you looked at that skirt for fifteen minutes and then decided not to buy it because it was too expensive. Which it was."

She made a familiar sideways pout. "Kay."

He waved down a taxi, and after they were piled in the back and the driver had the address punched in, he took a deep breath and started the real conversation.

"So what did Maya have to say at breakfast?"

"She was SO EXCITED, Dad. She wanted to call you right that minute, but I figured that you wouldn't appreciate it, if you'd been drinking."

It **had **been a groaning sort of a morning. "Thanks. I owe you - NOT a skirt."

"No fun."

"Granted."

"It wasn't that hard to distract her, anyway. She told us all kinds of stories of back when you were a lawyer. You were cooler than I expected, if she was telling them right."

"Gee, thanks."

"Anyway, that lasted until YOU called ME. Even though it was supposed to be me calling you."

"Was it? I guess I was still pretty out of it."

"You were...but that was when the story got REALLY good. I mean, you're a snap-decision guy, Dad, but you went up into the mountains to look after Uncle Larry and then called in the middle of the night to say all of a sudden that you wanted to grow up to be a lawyer with a car. And then it turns out it's because HE'S disappointed in YOU."

He was still getting used to that one himself. "...Pretty much."

"And that you have to do THREE things. So all of us sat back down and tried to figure out the third one for you."

Oh, God. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear this list, at least not in his guise as a responsible person.

"You could run the Boston Marathon."

"Trucy. Do you want me to keel over and die?" She winced all of a sudden, and he put an arm over her shoulders in a quick squeeze of apology.

"No, though. I'm okay, but I'm in no shape for that. And I'm not sure that running a marathon I have absolutely no interest in would qualify as a meaningful improvement in my life."

"I know. So two: learn to ACTUALLY play the piano."

"I'll have you know that my inability is practically a point of pride."

"You screw up Heart and Soul."

"It's a gift."

"Three: eat more vegetables."

"If the first two are passing the bar and learning to drive, I don't think I can make the third one be broccoli."

"Four. Get out of L.A. and do some traveling. See the rest of the world. See, like, REAL Russia. And real Mexico, not just Olvera Street."

"Truce...that's actually a fantastic idea. And I'd love to take you around the world. But we don't have that kind of money saved up…and the next few months are going to be SO busy..." He focused on the view through the windshield for a moment. "Let's make that one a rain check. It won't be this year, but it'll happen, okay?"

She grinned, and hugged his arm. "Thanks, Dad." A quick silence, then, "...I didn't mean you HAD to, it was just..."

"No, honey. It's a great idea. I'm sold. You can stay here if you want, when the time comes, I'm still going." She punched him in the shoulder.

"Five. Start seeing somebody." And she looked apprehensively at him from under the brim of her hat, and he knew this was what she'd been waiting to get to.

So he rerouted the conversation. "Pearls didn't start making a nuisance of herself over that?"

Trucy giggled. "No, she got all embarrassed. Because Maya started teasing her about how she used to try to get you guys together."

Phoenix grinned in an embarrassed way himself. "She wasn't subtle. You know, she slapped me for talking to Iris once?"

"That's...kind of messed up." Trucy was snickering. "But anyway, no. After Maya let up on her, Pearls actually said something interesting. She said that she felt really bad about how she acted, when she got a little older and realized something. She realized that Maya didn't fit your type, at all."

_What is that supposed to mean, exactly?_

"She said that what you go for is poise. And Maya said yeah, that seemed right. That it was her older sister that you'd always kind of had a crush on, and maybe Iris. Is that true?"

_Poise?_

_I suppose..._

Trucy continued. "But then Maya asked Pearls if that meant Pearls was calling her NOT poised, and kinda retaliated by saying that it was a good thing that Pearls had gotten over that delusional romantic phase, because if she hadn't she just knew she'd have run away with the first handsome delivery man she saw at the age of fifteen. And it got loud after that. Anyway, though...

"So maybe once you start hanging around with, you know, lawyers again, instead of at the Borscht Bowl, you'll turn up someone all poise-y."

He surprised himself with the caustic tone of his reply. "Kiddo. Before you start thinking too much about 'poise,' you're going to need to look up a different word. 'Disillusioned.' Or just how clear did Maya leave you on the Iris story? Especially in front of Pearls?"

He looked at her stonily, and she scrunched down in the seat. "Trucy, I'd say I appreciate your nudge, but I don't. Put romance somewhere **below **the Boston Marathon and the pile of broccoli, and drop it."

She tried one more time. "But-"

"D, I, S, I, L..."

She swiveled around as far as she could in the seat and stared at the passing traffic. And she mustered all the sarcasm a teenage girl could.

"That's the spirit, Dad."

* * *

March

* * *

_"Why is it that you've come to see me?"_

* * *

One of the very few things that Miles Edgeworth had been sure of, upon his return, was that he would have some difficulty being civil to Klavier Gavin.

He'd despised Klavier for most of seven years, after all. He'd watched the footage of Wright's last trial and been appalled by the silly, **casual **way that the boy had wrecked Wright's career. And it had been hard to think of him as anything but an extra arm of Kristoph's.

Watching Kristoph on trial had forced him to reevaluate that position.

But seven years of dislike and disdain, no matter how unwarranted, couldn't but leave a taste in the mouth, and Klavier's general attitude and aesthetic seemed so far removed from his own as to be almost Martian.

And truth be told, it probably didn't help that he had been to college with at least half a dozen young men in what he thought was very much in the same vein: smug, languid, pierced, and ornamental. His interactions with them had generally taken the form of months of mutual sneering punctuated by the occasional half-scornful, half-serious proposition. He'd always refused furiously, and the sneers would resume.

As it turned out, he'd been back in the Prosecutors' Office for a few days before he even saw Klavier.

To an extent, that had been planned. The office was woefully understaffed, and it had seemingly taken no more than three hours from when Franziska had announced at breakfast that she intended to return to Los Angeles - and to bring him **with** her - for both of them to be welcomed back with desperately open arms. Of course, he wouldn't be taking any cases for at least a few months, and neither would she - they were to start off in an advisory capacity, his role in particular shaped by the research he'd been doing, crisscrossing across Europe. All of those documents were now stored on his laptop, and as he'd walked up eleven switchback flights of concrete stairs (Franziska had taken the elevator) and along the row of doors on the twelfth floor that first Thursday, he felt almost like a fraud. _Would they want me back, if they knew how much sleepwalking I've been doing for seven years? Or would they simply like to borrow the laptop?_

Both he and Franziska had been given the choice of returning on Thursday, when the office was going to be nigh empty until the weekend thanks to a particularly brutal court calendar, or on a more normal Monday, and both had opted to come in earlier. They had been assigned small adjacent offices near the door to the stairwell, and the first slow days were spent in unpacking and familiarizing themselves with the current caseload and with changes in operations. Only a few people stopped by to say hello.

One of them, Edgeworth was surprised and rather touched to see, was his former secretary, now administrator of the Office secretarial pool. She was still soft-spoken, but she made a point to tell him that she'd assigned the most capable of her juniors jointly to him and to Franziska - and she unjammed a stuck drawer for him with a bobby pin. It was reassuring to know she was around.

The second was Ema Skye. She had been at the courthouse on Thursday morning, but had remembered his first day back and on her return that afternoon headed first to the twelfth floor rather than to the lab. She hugged him, which was a pleasant surprise, and rattled off a list of all of the astonishing forensic devices that she'd made and he needed to come down to see, and told him to watch out, that the younger Gavin was insufferable. She also left a crumpled snack bag on his chair, and while his ego wanted to leave it in somebody **else's **wastebasket , his more practical side dropped it in with his own trash.

The third visitor was really one of Franziska's. Late on Friday afternoon he heard a squeaking sound nearby and opened the door to see the enormous trenchcoated figure of Detective Gumshoe pushing a metal cart loaded down with a dozen big file boxes. "SIR!" The big man looked overjoyed, and stopped the cart in front of Franziska's office, wiped his hands (somewhat ineffectually) on his coat pockets, and stuck one hand out, nearly dislodging one of the top cartons. Edgeworth took it, and had his shoulder rattled in its socket in response. Gumshoe, he suddenly remembered, was an enthusiastic handshaker even on a normal day.

"Can I just say how glad we are to have you back, sir? You and Miss von Karma, of course. We've REALLY needed you here."

_Who is we?  
_  
But the noise had brought Franziska to the door, and once it was open she gave Gumshoe and the cart the once-over at the same time, with the same small, edgy grin she got when a trial was going her way. "Scruffy."

The detective made a funny gesture - as though he'd considered shaking her hand, given it up in favor of a salute, and then given **that **up halfway through. But he just said, still happily, "Forty-seven."

"Exactly so," said Franziska.

"You made him bring you forty-seven of those crates?"

"That is none of your business." She turned back to the detective. "Bring those in."

"Sir!", to Franziska this time. But he did shake Edgeworth's hand again, and convey a semi-coherent greeting from Maggey, before giving the cart another shove and vanishing through the doorway.

That had been it. And that was fine.

* * *

_"What unfinished business do you have in Los Angeles?"_

* * *

Klavier Gavin appeared on Monday. Edgeworth had arrived early that morning, seeking some kind of psychological advantage, and had listened to the gradual accumulation of human sound in the office from behind a closed door. His new office shared a wall with Franziska's, though, and at around ten he was pulled up from his paperwork by the indistinct sounds of her speaking to someone.

She had **not **come into the office at the same time as he had. Helping Franziska to buy a car, incidentally, was an experience he had little interest in repeating.

-sharp-, went Franziska's voice. He'd already missed what she was responding to.

-amused if polite upswing-, went a male voice he could barely hear and could not identify. Someone had risen to the challenge.

-retort, just slightly acidic-,

-laugh, polite leavetaking-,

-polite dismissal-.

_Given my sister, that seems to have gone well._

And then he heard a few approaching footsteps, and a rap on the door, and said come in. And in walked the most extravagantly and pointlessly beautiful young man he'd ever seen.

_Well...I'm not smitten. But I certainly can see why other people are._

Long golden hair. Well over six feet in height, taller than Edgeworth himself. Blue eyes and a face that looked more like a sculpture than a genetic accident. And dressed far more like a rock star than an attorney, from the motorcycle boots to the purple silk shirt to the excess of silver jewelry. And saying, "Guten Morgen, Staatsanwalt."

Edgeworth's cold stare of assessment continued for sufficient seconds for the young man to falter and pick up the social ball that the older one hadn't quite realized he'd dropped.

* * *

"_Do you find it hard to make conversation?"_

* * *

"I'm Klavier Gavin."

"Of course you are." He hadn't meant that to sound so harsh. "I'm Miles Edgeworth."

And Klavier smiled, a small self-aware smile of friendliness and chagrin. "Of course you are."

That was the moment Edgeworth started to like him.

He continued. "You and your sister are legends here to this day. I will be very honored, mein Herr, to work alongside you.

"I have also been sternly informed that you are two people with whom I am not to flirt. Which, I think, is a shame."

Edgeworth's eyebrows rose, and he felt his own lips quirk into a thin grin. "Prosecutor." Klavier was all attention. "**That counts.**"

Klavier promptly spun on his heel and gazed intently at the opposite wall. "I beg your pardon. I intended to be professional...There really is nothing to look at on this bookshelf."

"Not as yet, no. I shall make every endeavor to put something there at eye level before your next visit, however."

"I would be most appreciative."

"It was good to meet you, Prosecutor."

"Likewise, ja." And the blond prodigy disappeared out the door.

Later that afternoon, Edgeworth surprised himself by propping a Steel Samurai manga discovered in the bottom of his briefcase against the back of the top shelf. He used paperweights to hold it open to the double-page spread of the Samurai shouting "TAKE THAT!"

* * *

_"What are your interests, outside of work?"_

* * *

Klavier stopped by to say hello the next morning, but he didn't notice the book then. He did see it on Wednesday, and laughed a loud and genuine laugh. "Do you always put those where your sister can't see them?"

"Generally. She doesn't see the humor in it."

"That is a pity. Perhaps I could sit her down and explain..."

"Prosecutor Gavin, you are not to flirt with my sister with me either."

Klavier turned around with the too-fast dignity of a cat caught falling off the back of the couch, walked over in front of the book, and noisily turned the page. This time Edgeworth couldn't keep the amusement out of his voice.

"Good day."

"Guten Tag."

That became the routine. Every morning that Klavier was not in court, he would stride down the row, say a chivalrous good morning to a snippy (but not angry) Franziska, and continue on to the next office to be amiably absurd at Edgeworth. Now and then there was a legitimate question.

"You are very familiar with the differences between our torts laws and the Belgian equivalents, ja?"

"Certainly. How has this become relevant?"

"Franklin Sharpe called earlier this morning, about the case with the importer, the one that is approaching a plea bargain. He seemed interested in pointing out the dissimilarities between our law and Belgium's, and in making the case that his client deserves some clemency in light of his assumption that what is legal in Belgium is legal here."

"That is ridiculous." Edgeworth had read the files collected on the matter so far, as he had for every current case in front of the Prosecutor's Office. And he knew that name. "Nothing his client did is legal in Belgium either. Or the Netherlands, or Luxembourg, if he thinks to inquire."

"Good. I won't need to apologize."

"For what? Did you already tell him that?"

"Nein, I said something about his Little Grey Cells and hung up on him. But Prosecutor Libra was still on the line on her extension, so he's only half so furious as he might be."

Edgeworth may have been poor at talking to people, but Klavier was clever, affable, undemanding, and utterly facetious, and it is very easy to talk to someone like that.

* * *

_"What do you think is behind these barriers you place between yourself and others?"_

* * *

"Good morning, Secretaries-Call-Him-The-Silver-Fox."

"They do not. Good morning, Klavier."

"Good morning, Grey Eminence."

Not even looking up from his paperwork. "Good morning, sunshine."

* * *

The weeks went by like this, and one morning Klavier's nonsense was undercut by the sounds of an altercation out in the bullpen where the paralegals and the secretaries worked. A hoarse voice and a low one alternated, the former becoming more agitated with every volley and the latter picking up an edge more slowly.

"...and you are quite certain that you are not interested in teaching me how to play chess?" Klavier was circling the empty board in the corner, not for the first time.

"You know perfectly well how to play chess. You simply don't care about not playing badly."

"And this would be a problem?"

"I'm sure you'd have a wonderful time. But you'd have an equally good time if I showed you how to lose at tic-tac-toe, with considerably less investment of energy on my part." And, intending to show the younger man out, he opened the door straight into the middle of the argument.

"**SABOTEUR! TOKEN!** What did you _**DO**_, to take my spot away? Who owed you a favor - and what** KIND**?" Winston Payne's voice had gotten hoarser over seven years. The curly-haired woman he was shouting at was even shorter than he was.

"Ah-ah-ah," murmured Klavier, sounding troubled.

"That is Libra?" Edgeworth responded equally quietly.

"Ja. The High Prosecutor announced this morning that she would henceforth be permitted to take some of the more complicated corporate cases. And Payne is never happy to see his peers' status improve, much less that of his juniors. But he has never to my knowledge harangued anyone in front of the office like this..."

At that moment, Franziska's door swung open and Gumshoe stepped out backwards, one of those file boxes awkwardly under one arm. "Forty-six?" he was asking.

"Forty-five," said Franziska crisply.

Neither of them had been speaking quietly, and their voices startled Payne out of his rant; the bullpen's inhabitants had fallen silent some time ago, and he clearly hadn't been expecting an interruption. He turned around counterclockwise, and so the first face he saw along the row was neither Franziska's nor the detective's, but Edgeworth's.

"**YOU!**" The sour little man's face flushed. "I heard they'd taken you back!" He turned further and saw Franziska. "And you, you shrew!" Her fingers twitched immediately towards the handle at her waist, but Gumshoe dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder, and, amazingly, she stopped and stood still.

Payne had no such restraint. "I should have known better than to expect fair treatment from an organization that crowns itself with people like you! Forget the years of effort! There's no point! Look on top, and all you see are pretty fetish parlor graduates who learned all they knew from someone on Death Row! You can't trust any of them! What's the matter, Klavier, you didn't feel like you had anyone you could talk to anymore?"

Next to Edgeworth, Klavier went rigid.

_**WHUMP.**_

Payne hadn't noticed Gumshoe picking his way between the chairs and their horrified occupants. The big man stopped right behind him and slammed the heavy file box he'd been holding onto the nearest desk.

"I think that's **ENOUGH**." Payne had jumped at the noise, but he still looked for a moment as though he wanted to argue, until he finished turning and realized just how large the disapproving giant in front of him was. "Payne. You weren't passed over just because you don't look good in leather, or because you're short on friends in high places. It's because you were a smarmy, little, **WEASEL** before you lost your first case, and a nervous wreck after that! And you're **LAZY**! I've been working with this office for fifteen years, and I've **NEVER**,** EVER** seen you do anything **HARD**!

"The day you go through half the grief your betters have to take down someone half as dangerous, you can start looking for some recognition. Until then? You can turn green and choke, far as I'm concerned!"

He turned to Prosecutor Libra. "Sir, I think you would be within your rights to file a complaint. The police department isn't about to forget what you got done in the garment district last year." He picked up his box and tromped towards the elevators. A moment later, Libra went the same way, and Payne bolted for his office. Franziska slammed her door shut, and Edgeworth was able to return his attention to the person next to him. The High Prosecutor could deal with Payne.

* * *

_"Can you sympathize with your younger self at all? Any of them?"_

* * *

Klavier had turned so pale under his tan that a few freckles were visible on his face, and he had grabbed the edge of the bookshelf with his right hand. This time there was nothing amusing about his staring at nothing.

Edgeworth wasn't able to tell, later on, whether he'd just glanced sideways for a moment or whether he'd stared, but however long the look had taken, it painted across his mind the idea that history was crouching in the quiet air, waiting to repeat itself. He shut the door.

"Klavier. Sit down."

The young man didn't move.

"Prosecutor Gavin. Be **seated**."

Klavier instinctively turned at the change in his tone, like a student responding to a stern instructor, and sunk down in the chair opposite the desk. For someone so tall, he could look dreadfully fragile. _Now that I think of it, does he wear those big jackets everywhere he goes?  
_  
Edgeworth's office was never without tea, and he placed two cups on the desk before taking a seat himself. Not because he thought Klavier was likely to be a tea drinker, but because courtesy was the least he could offer and because he felt he was flying blind. He did not know how to be comforting.

"Klavier. Surely you don't take Winston Payne seriously?"

The response was quieter than usual, but otherwise was a reasonably good attempt at typical flippancy. "Nein. I usually make like your sister and have the detective chase him about the room with a cardboard carton-"

Edgeworth tapped his own teacup sharply with one finger, and the rough porcelain of the base scraped against the glass surface of the desk. The noise was enough to shut Klavier up. Edgeworth looked at him levelly.

"I do not take the man seriously. Nobody does. But he isn't the first person to indicate that...that I was created in Kristoph's image.

"Not the first...nein, and not the thirty-first."

* * *

_"What have other people told you about yourself?"_

* * *

"Klavier...don't make me embarrass myself for no reason."

"What?"

"Pick up your cup."

"What?"

"**Do it.**"

At a loss, he did, wrapping his hands around it as if he were afraid to drop it. The white English china looked out of place in his callused fingers with their garish rings.

"This is my old desk, from when I was a prosecutor here before. I don't know where they've been keeping it in the meantime."

"Ah...I am afraid I couldn't say-"

"In March of 2017, I left a…suicide note where your cup was sitting. My mentor and our disgraced police chief, one after the other, convinced me that nothing but time prevented me from becoming another of them. And so I did not want to give myself the time.

"Fortunately Dockweiler Beach is below the flight paths out of Los Angeles International Airport. And it occurred to me that I had never seen British Columbia no matter how beautiful I had been told it was."

Klavier placed the cup back down, very gingerly, and stared at his knees.

* * *

_"Why have you been out of the country?"_

* * *

"You also might not be aware that I faced Kristoph in court several times, and had either the poor judgment or the misfortune to speak with him privately as well. I am painfully familiar with both his manner and his methods, and so you ought to believe me when I say that I do not see any of your brother in you. Here in person, or on the record in court. I wouldn't have you in the room if I did."

Klavier was obviously about to protest.

"I haven't failed to notice that you have blond hair and a certain facility for smooth talk, Klavier, no. But those qualities aren't especially relevant to being a monster. All I can ask on the subject is why you don't simply cut your hair, if the resemblance-"

"My paternal grandfather wore his hair this way! And he spoiled us when we were very young. I remember him fondly."

"Which is a perfectly satisfactory answer. Moving on from that. Why did it bother you so especially when Payne asked if you had no one to talk to?"

Klavier was silent.

"Your brother is, most deservedly, in prison. Daryan Crescend as well. You have no other family. What about the other members of your band?"

"…They were appalled at Daryan. But they are not very happy to think of me putting him in prison, either."

"So who is left?"

"I visit Vera Misham now and then. So does Apollo Justice."

"Which is good of you, but I imagine she isn't precisely a close friend, at least not yet. Who is left?"

Klavier glanced away and held up an empty hand, like someone trying to determine if it was raining. "I'm famous."

"Not even Apollo?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"These are…dark days, and it is awkward. If things could be otherwise, he would be a good friend."

Klavier went silent and guilty. And history crouched, visible to the older man, in preparation for another circuit.

Once seemed like enough. He lifted the cooled remains of his cup of tea. "Prosecutor. To blameless awkwardness and a clear conscience. I may have done myself out of them - but I recognize them both."

Klavier paused, his eyes wide, and then drained his cold tea in one graceless gulp. "Herr Edgeworth...I hope that my current state of solitude doesn't make me sound less grateful, and more desperate...but for what you've said…thank you. And, well...you have in me a friend for life if you are interested in having one."

* * *

Although that was by far the longest proper conversation they ever had, Edgeworth took to coming in later and staying later, and Klavier took to bringing his leftover work into a corner of the former's smaller office once the day was officially over. Usually they would write and read for an hour or two in the steady light of the green glass banker's lamp and with the occasional scritching of a pencil or turning of a page. (Franziska never stayed so late - she either visited Adrian Andrews in the evenings or brought a crate or two home with her.)

Some nights, when Klavier was either less busy or more rebellious, he would remain in his own office, but with the door open, and play the guitar. Edgeworth would leave his door open, too, and listen with half an ear to snippets of melody that would suddenly start or stop. Often enough they were Gavinners tracks, which was hardly surprising, but there were also new pieces (one could hear them improve, version over version) and songs from other groups, new and old. One in particular (that Edgeworth could not quite place, though he swore to himself that he'd eventually figure it out without asking) seemed to originally have been written for several different instruments, and so the guitar would hop from one line to another while Klavier murmured to himself. After particularly choppy or repetitive sessions, he'd wind up by softly playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra (by way of apology) and then they would both walk down the eleven flights of stairs, and each drive home alone.

Sitting at that chilly picnic table in the middle of the night in Teresita hadn't left Edgeworth with a particularly satisfactory list of three things to do. He only came up with two - and one was impossible. But if one was impossible and one was an idea he apparently wasn't ready to have yet, at least the first had been simple.

He'd had an appointment for a regular physical with his old GP before he even set foot in the office, and as it ended she gave him the same tart lecture she always had, about getting enough sleep and vitamin D and stress - in fact, it felt as though he hadn't **left**. But when he finished rebuttoning his shirt and asked her, abashedly, for a referral to, perhaps, a psychiatrist or a counselor - he wasn't sure - she stopped in her businesslike tracks and said, "About time you let yourself feel better, Prosecutor. Send flowers to whoever finally got that idea through."

He had no plans to send Larry flowers.

* * *

Phoenix made a start himself. As he said, it was good preparation - taking the bar with hundreds of twentysomething recent graduates from Stanford and Boalt couldn't possibly be more embarrassing than taking the traffic law test and applying for a permit at the DMV in a roomful of excited fifteen-year-olds.


	4. Spoken, Written, Unsaid

May 15

Kristoph Gavin was hanged at five minutes after midnight.

Klavier did not come down the row that morning. Not that Edgeworth could have expected him to. Franziska, though, appeared in the doorway a few minutes after he arrived early, with an expression part resolute, part sympathetic, part fierce. There weren't words for what she was communicating. He answered with a harsh swallow and a nod and a narrowing of the eyes.

She shut the door behind her and walked over to stand next to him. In return, he neither stood nor looked up, but gripped her left hand with his right. She leaned sideways against his chair for a minute, then helped herself to a cup of tea and left the room again without saying a word.

Franziska had been, until a week ago with Dr. Crow, the only person he'd told why he'd left Los Angeles that spring.

* * *

The day passed slow and resonant, and the sun sank into a violet blur, and hours later he gathered his papers and his laptop and went down the stairs. It felt strange descending them alone, as if his footsteps were louder. He'd done this alone every weekday for years, of course, but it hadn't taken long to become accustomed to the double clatter of walking down the stairs with Klavier a few steps ahead or behind.

He'd already put his things into the trunk of the car when he saw the motorcycle, and it took him a moment to register why it shouldn't have been there.

He was in reasonably good shape, but going quickly **up **eleven flights of stairs winded him still, and his breath was ragged as he went along the row of doors with darkness under them, past his own and down to Gavin's.

It was shut and locked, and when he put an ear to it he couldn't be sure whether the faint bump he heard was coming from the interior or from the still-accelerated pulse in his ear.

"Klavier?"

Nothing. Well, he could just leave the boy to sit in a dark room by himself...

Something twisted in his chest, and he really couldn't. He gave the doorknob a good wrench and the base of the door a sharp kick at the same time, and stumbled into the office - actually faintly lit by a small desk lamp at the far end of the room - in a sideways arc.

Klavier looked like a mess. A very young mess. He was sitting on the floor, knees up to his chest, between a low shelf and the window, with headphones on and the hood of his sweatshirt squished behind his neck and his snarled hair. The treble of whatever the headphones were playing wasn't leaking out into the room, but the bass was, and the strangeness of the sound combined with Edgeworth's reluctance to touch him to hold the older man in place.

The audible tune, such as it was, was recognizable as one of the Gavinners' songs, but not as one of the solos that Klavier had played in the office at night - which...meant it must have been one of **Daryan's** parts. And it was overlaid by a sound that wasn't even musical. The guitar was - laughing. A laugh he'd **heard** before, in its original context, while sitting mesmerized in front of court footage Gumshoe had mailed express to Germany.

If someone else had made this recording, it would have been staggeringly cruel. It was designed for torture - but the person who'd made it could only have been the same person who was listening to it, eyes shut, giving no indication that he'd even noticed that the senior attorney had entered the room.

Edgeworth considered that the right thing to do might be to yank the headphones away, and possibly to step on them.

* * *

_"You don't like to touch other people - why not?"_

* * *

Instead, he glanced around the room, looking for something, and grabbed it from a corner of the desk when he saw it. Klavier kept a television set in the office. When he jabbed the power button on the remote, unsurprisingly, a news program came on. He pressed at one of the arrows. Static. What was he looking for, other than something certain not to mention Kristoph?

He settled on the channel he'd have put on if he'd been home alone, and as it was nearing the bottom of the hour, he reached it just in time for the closing theme of Global Studios' newest tokusatsu serial to start playing. He upped the volume. No response from Klavier. He upped the volume again and again, until it was nearly painful, and when the chorus burst on the volume rose again. Which must have finally got through, because Klavier made an inarticulate noise of shock and got up on one knee, looking around and knocking his own headphones off in the process. They made a plastic rattle when they hit the floor, and the treble parts of that malicious guitar composite joined the cacophony.

The combined noise was bizarre, and the sight couldn't have been any less - Klavier crumpled and shaky and half-kneeling on the floor at one end of the room, and Edgeworth standing in a suit and cravat at the other, holding the remote at arm's length and with his other hand pressed against one of his ears, and the colorful figures of the serial mock-fighting on the screen.

Their eyes met for a moment, and Klavier yanked the headphones out of the jack in the player in his pocket, and a second later Edgeworth hit the on/off button on the remote. His ears rang.

"No one saw you all day. When did you get here?"

"Early."

"How early?"

"Three."

"I should call the detective to give you a **BIBLICAL** ticket if you made it all the way back through the desert from Calipatria by that time. You'd have been dead if you **sneezed**. Show me your hands."

Klavier got up, wobbly, and came a few steps closer, and held his hands out. They were red and crabbed, with swollen knuckles, from the bike's handlebars.

_A normal person might take his wrist. I suspect. Would shake him. But I'm not normal._

"Follow me. You can't be left alone."

"Well - just about, don't you think?" That frivolity seemed darker now, curling ribbons on top of a bleak package. Edgeworth shook his head.

_I'm trying to provide a pillar of sanity, but instead of getting into the elevator I'm still marching him down eleven flights of stairs. The blind leading the blind into traffic._

* * *

_"Have you ever had a refuge?"_

* * *

It was only after the red car carried them in silence up out of the parking garage and into the street that Edgeworth had to face the question of just where he was driving.

He could leave Klavier on his own front porch. Hardly.

But he couldn't make the idea of driving back to his own apartment make any sense either. His own company was probably only a half step better than loneliness. And while Los Angeles was most likely full of people who would be happy to take a miserable Klavier Gavin home of an evening, the fact remained that he wasn't a trophy, especially not today, and Edgeworth was not one of those people.

Before he'd decided where to go, or so he had thought, he found himself following a mental map he hadn't entirely known he remembered. The red car came to a stop in the lot next to the small office building that housed the Wright Anything Agency.

_I don't know whether this is a good idea - but I don't have any better ones._

_I don't even know how we're going to get in._

But the second problem solved itself. Klavier had suddenly ducked his head lower and peered through the side window at something, showing more animation than he had over the rest of the drive, and when Edgeworth followed his gaze he could see a human figure just at the corner of the building, leaning against the housing for the electricity meter.

Klavier got himself out of the passenger side of the car quickly, if not very gracefully or quietly, and the other figure took a few steps closer and resolved itself into the agency's only actual attorney. Apollo Justice. Edgeworth had never seen him in person before.

"Klavier?"

The kid's voice was loud off the stucco walls, and you could see his breath in the air. It was a chilly night, after all, that hadn't been obviously such from the confines of the Prosecutor's Office or the car. He hurried over, seemingly glad for the interruption, and looked his rival up and down with concern in his wide brown eyes.

"You look TERRIBLE."

Standing on the other side of the car, Edgeworth wondered whether anyone had ever said that to him before. But all Klavier said in return was, "Dark circles," with an unfamiliar lack of bravado, as he looked down at Apollo.

Apollo scraped a knuckle under one eye, as if that was going to help, and said, "You still look worse than I do."

Amazingly, a rasp of a smile, even if it collapsed halfway through. "Ja. I win."

"It's freezing out here...You'd better...huh?" Justice seemed to notice the car, and its driver, only then. "Hey! You're..."

_So he recognizes me. I wonder why? _There were a couple of possibilities.

"I am."

"Um. What...Wow...Come on, though..." Apollo dug a key out of his pocket, unlocked the building's front door, and led the way in. Edgeworth found himself in a hallway he hadn't been in in years. It looked worn, even in just the bluish wash from the skylight. He was last up the stairs, and the feel of the cheap carpet under his shoes, and the strips of metal along the edges of the treads, carried a shock of familiarity up to his spine.

Instead of unlocking the door at the top, Justice knocked. And Wright's voice came through: "Apollo? Are you locked out?" Apollo made some kind of indeterminate no-but-yes vowel sound in response, and a then there was a metallic **kachunk**, and Wright stood framed in the doorway.

He looked down at Apollo, first in line, and caught sight of Klavier behind him. And as he shifted his focus to the opponent who'd cost him his badge at the beginning of all this and began to devise some kind of greeting, his sharp blue eyes adjusted to the darkness of the hall, and his voice stuck as he saw Miles a few steps lower than that.

Edgeworth hadn't been in the office since the day he'd told Phoenix he was returning to Europe.

_Everyone here is pleading a case. I wonder what they all are._

The silence stretched.

_Please, Wright, don't say "What are you doing here?", or "Where did you find that?", or anything clever about Chinese food._

And he didn't. He gave the trio on the stairway one more sequential, evaluative stare, without a hint of a smile or a hint of anger, and paused, and then stood to one side to let everyone in.

The small, warm office/apartment felt like a world apart from the lunar gloom and silence of the stairs and the cold night beyond. Inside, Trucy Wright sat on a couch with a young woman who Edgeworth realized must be Vera Misham, though she wasn't wearing a kerchief over her hair the way she had been in all of the footage he had seen.

"Polly?" Wright's daughter asked. Then, with sudden formality as she saw an unfamiliar person, "Sir?"

The Misham girl was shyer, and her eyes flicked aside to the face she knew - and she let out a soft "Oh!" when she saw just what Klavier looked like. Her exclamation drew Trucy's attention, and the latter turned out to be able to do what no one else in the room quite could - she bounced over the arm of the couch to the younger prosecutor and threw her arms around him, as high as she could reach.

"Oh...come sit. Polly, move."

The four young people moved in an awkward eddy around the same couch and the table in front of it, and settled down, and as Vera murmured a proper hello, Phoenix gave Edgeworth a look and went into the kitchen. The grey-haired man followed.

They hadn't spoken properly in Sonoma, and not at all since then. Wright looked into the refrigerator for, apparently, nothing, and then closed it and leaned against the sink.

"You brought me Klavier Gavin."

"Maybe I brought him to Apollo."

"Maybe you did. Did you?"

"No, not entirely."

"Why, then?"

"Because...because I couldn't think of anywhere better. Or anywhere else at all."

"That's flattering."

"Pick one; you can be offended that I brought him or offended that you weren't the obvious choice, but not both." He glanced up at the light fixture and sighed.

* * *

_"Do you think your life would be simpler if you could be more straightforward?"_

* * *

"I probably came here because it's where I wished I had gone."

"All those years ago? Miles, I'm not the same now as I was then."

"Nor Klavier. Nor I."

Phoenix made a quick, unkind face into the sink. "As of today, nor Kristoph." At least he'd said it quietly.

"Why is Vera Misham here?"

"She's here often enough. She gets along with both of them."

"But why is she here tonight? For her own benefit?"

"I thought it would do Apollo some good to see her. He hasn't slept in two days, or nearly. Or eaten more than an orange. And he's loud. When Apollo doesn't sleep, I don't either."

"Doesn't Trucy have school?"

"Trucy could sleep through a…a diesel dinosaur. She's all right...but this is a tangent, anyway...I thought having Vera here..."

"You thought having Vera here would remind him, and I really mean no pun at all, that justice was being served."

A heavy sigh. "Yes."

"And it worked so well that he was standing by himself in the parking lot, with no jacket on, when we got here."

"He can't mourn Kristoph. It's obscene."

"He can't mourn the psychopath who poisoned Vera, killed her father, and smashed Trucy's father's skull in with a wine bottle. But he can mourn the mentor who gave him a place to fit in and made him an adult."

"You're splitting hairs. They're the same person."

"It makes no difference. That is the difficulty." It was Edgeworth's turn to pause. "Perhaps I should have brought Franziska, too."

"How is your sister?"

"Calmer than you would remember. And very busy."

"And...I guess I should ask...how are you?"

"Laugh."

"Edgeworth, I know that when you say that laughing is the last thing I should do."

"In long-delayed therapy. And..." He snapped open his wallet and extracted a receipt from the all-hours pharmacy nearest the Prosecutor's Office, holding it between two fingers.

"Escitalopram. The good stuff, I see."

"One fight on two fronts."

"I'm between two armies, myself. I don't know if you saw the bar review books in the front room. They aren't Apollo's. And..." In much the same way, he opened his wallet for something.

Edgeworth looked at it. "A driver's learning permit."

Phoenix adopted an Essex accent for a moment and tapped the permit against Edgeworth's receipt. "Cheers, mate."

"Sante...You wouldn't have happened to have brought any of that red back from Teresita?"

"That WAS good, wasn't it? And absolutely not. We have grape juice, and we have water. And Jarritos, but Trucy will wail if anyone else drinks one."

"I'm fine, thank you."

"...I suppose there is something I should ask you about, if you're here. If I weren't so tired, maybe I'd be able to think about it more clearly myself."

"And that would be?"

"We got a box by courier today. At least, Apollo did. I happened to be the one to accept it, since I was coming in the front door anyway." Phoenix leaned back for a moment to see if anyone in the front room was paying attention. Actually Trucy was looking right at him, but when she saw him looking back she shrugged one shoulder in acknowledgement and turned back towards the table. "I haven't said anything about it to him yet."

"What is it?"

"That's kind of a long story. And kind of not, but let's make it one for old time's sake. Do you remember Hill and Mendes?"

"They're Hill, Mendes, and Yao now. And Mendes is essentially retired."

"Oh...you would know that, I guess. Well, they were Kristoph's lawyers. Not his defense, for God's sake, that's not really what they do. But his general-business-of-life counsel. I guess that raising your own younger brother and sending him abroad to school can get complicated."

"And the box is from them? From Kristoph?"

"Yes...but not **recently**. Hence the long story. They were also his executors, and apparently the will that he left, in so far as it's still valid, is so full of contingency plans that it takes up most of a large binder. But there were special sections in it for Apollo. And for Klavier, too, though since he's also the default heir to anything that's left unseized and unassigned, maybe it doesn't matter.

"All kinds of things. Contingencies. But almost none of them came into play, because one of the very first ones was whether there was any degree of estrangement. And apparently there was some consternation over THAT. Finally the junior partner they foisted it on made the executive decision, and I know this because I stayed outside and called the office, that even if he'd never said anything to that effect, their teaming up to take him down in court probably would have counted as estrangement and then some even had Kristoph not been both A, evil, and B, petty."

"Hard to disagree."

"Right. So anyway, what Apollo got is a letter and a crate of books that's been in storage for years. I was still practicing when these got boxed up, and no one's been at them since. Except possibly a police officer to say yep, those are books all right, when they were poking around Kristoph's property after the first arrest. He shoved these in storage, along with a lot of others, and never went back. Everything else that there might have been for Apollo was post-estrangement clause and thus not happening.

"The books are just law books. Nice leather-bound old ones. If there's anything significant about them, I don't know what it is. But the letter, I wanted to ask you about. It seems innocuous enough to me, but I thought you might be able to tell me if you though it was actually some creepy manipulative thing, before I just gave it to him."

"Yes. It is."

"You haven't read it."

"I'll read it. But I don't need to read it to tell you that much."

"Is this your experience with von Karma talking? Because honestly, I thought you were the only person in this apartment right now who Kristoph HADN'T personally damaged."

_What do I __**say**__?_Edgeworth blinked out the dark little window over the sink.

Either this was the moment to explain where he'd been, and **why**, for seven years, or it was another moment in a long series of moments to say nothing at all. Because, after all, how would it help to bring it up, to say, by the way, guess what I discussed with Kristoph when I was trying to help, now, when it would sound like an excuse and when it was so, so laughably late. Late past mattering. It was. Unless he looked out the window and something outside on the street somehow told him otherwise. He stood, considering, heart pounding -

- and sighed long through his nose, as his lifelong habit of reticence won out. The opportunity to explain vanished with the set of headlights he saw flare in the blackness outside and swing away around a corner.

"Miles?"

"You wanted my expertise, didn't you? Let me see it." And Wright turned away, and fished an envelope down from the top of the refrigerator.

* * *

Apollo -

While, of course, I cannot be certain of the circumstances under which you are receiving this letter, I am quite certain that you will have received it in a timely fashion -

_- because it's not as though someone would have hidden it on top of a refrigerator to keep you from reading it -_

- and that you will no doubt be comporting yourself with the sincerity and innate wisdom for which I valued you so highly whilst you were in my employ.

The attached were not mine, not originally; they belonged to a former professor that I maintained a friendship with after my graduation, and I was surprised and touched to discover upon his death that he had set them aside for his former pupil. They are out of date, to be certain, and will only become more so, but the aesthetic pleasure, and, I give myself permission to hope, the pleasant memories, that they provide might be reason enough for you to make a place for them in your own offices.

I close by commending my brother to you. Although he sits on the opposite side of the courtroom, I can assure you that he is as honorable and as intelligent as yourself, and it pleases me to foresee illustrious and parallel careers for you both. A second set of books is to be his. But he can be lazy. Do make sure he reads one occasionally.

I am sorry to be going, Apollo, but if I am proud of anything that I leave behind, I am proud of you and of my brother, and of what I was able to provide for you both.

All my esteem,

Kristoph Gavin

* * *

He frowned down at the letter.

"Well?"

"It's...oily." _And even if I wish Klavier good luck, I wouldn't count any kind of commendation from his big brother as a healthy thing._

"I know it is. But other than that?"

"It's not precisely what I expected. Or...what I expected isn't here."

_Where is the gouge, Gavin? There has to be one..._

"Wright, may I have a look at those books?"

"I don't see why not, but..." Wright took another wary glance at the living room and stopped still. Which made Edgeworth think that something was wrong, but when he stepped over and looked through the doorway, he saw Trucy standing in front of the piano, smiling softly at her audience of three and holding what looked like a roll of paper for an adding machine or a cash register.

There was pride in Phoenix's voice, even though it wasn't pitched much louder than a murmur. "Watch, Edgeworth. She's been working on this one, and she's only even let me see it once. And I have no idea how-" He stopped as Trucy tossed the cylinder into the air, holding onto one end of the strip so that it unrolled as it flew.

And it was astonishing, because the strip of paper seemed to have a mind of its own and firm opinions about things like gravity and the laws of motion. It arced and bent through the air like a gymnast's streamer...and smaller cutout shapes rose from the flat surface as it fluttered down, the shapes of trees and buildings and clouds and hills. By the time it hit the floor, it was an entire paper road with a day's worth of delicate paper scenery, and when Trucy opened her hand, the end of the strip had a hole punched in it, from which dangled a car key (probably Apollo's), even though the paper should have been too tightly wound to permit it.

And the other remarkable thing was that the trio she'd been performing for, even though all of them were older than she was, and even though Vera was anxious and Apollo was downcast and Klavier was wretchedly unhappy, were looking at her with wide-eyed wonder. They looked, collectively, so **innocent **that it almost hurt to see.

Edgeworth stepped back from the doorway and leaned against the kitchen wall. "...She's very talented."

"Any of her family - I suppose I mean anyone else from Troupe Gramarye - would have been able to do that, if it had occurred to them. The sleight-of-hand and the fine work with the paper, anyway. The...pure light of it, though...that's all Trucy."

"Mm. The books?"

Wright knelt in front of the sink, opened the cabinet doors underneath, and slid out a heavy-looking box.

"You put books under your sink?"

"I had a trash bag over them. Besides, so long as the dish soap is next to the tap, no one was going to look in here." He moved as if he were going to heft them up to the counter, but Edgeworth forestalled him by kneeling down. Wright opened the box, and the evocative acrid/vanilla scent of old paper wafted up. Most of the volumes were resting spine-up, but the last few were fit in sideways, and these drew the blue-eyed man's attention.

"Hey, I bet you'd know. If these are so nice otherwise, why do the edges of the pages look so uneven?"

"These are old enough that the first owner would have had to cut the pages apart with a knife. Most of Manfred's library was books like these. You've really never encountered that?"

"Not at Barnes & Noble. I've HEARD of it, but not seen it. Anyway. Looks like paper cut central."

And the entire world obediently stopped for Miles. So he could say calmly, more calmly than he'd felt in months if not years, "Wright. Don't touch those, and humor me for a moment."

He got up and walked back out of the kitchen, towards the door. Vera was drawing something on a sketchbook, and Trucy and the younger attorneys were watching her do it, and no one really seemed to notice him leave, especially since he left the door cracked. And he did the same with the one at the foot of the shadowed stairway, and opened the trunk of his car and retrieved the CSI kit that Ema Skye had assembled just for him, a few weeks ago, even though he wasn't doing any investigating just yet. He'd **never **been so calm.

And he shut the trunk and shut the front door and shut the apartment door and walked quietly back into the tiny kitchen with the toolbox, where Wright was sitting on the floor with the carton, and looking into it the way you might look into a tank of piranhas.

He glanced back himself, to see if anyone in the front room was looking into the kitchen, and opened the kit when he was sure none of them were. And he pulled out a pair of disposable gloves and offered Phoenix a set.

"It is possible, however, that I'm simply being paranoid."

"And it's possible that you're NOT." Wright took the gloves and put them on, and lifted the little spray bottle out of the tray, and waited for Edgeworth to set the little battery-powered light up and angle the beam down at the box. And he tried it.

They both breathed in perfect quiet, looking down at the pages. After several seconds, blue bloomed along the edges on the very first book Phoenix had tested.

The man in the beanie began to curse furiously under his breath, at great length. He was giving an entire speech. But Edgeworth felt curiously light.

"Let me take these. Right now."

"Why? They're EVIDENCE."

"You can't try a dead man."

"Then why do YOU want them?"

"So Ema can verify whether this was the same batch of poison that Kristoph used for the Mishams, for one. Not that I have any doubts, but no one deserves to spend any time worrying about it. And because the lab has an incinerator."

"...All right. I'll come with you."

"No, you won't. You have some other things to do...and something **not **to do."

"What would those be?" Phoenix's face was **thunderous**, and he seemed to want to argue.

"What you will **not **do is mention to Apollo, or any of the other three, that this box or this letter ever came, much less anything about the contents. Don't interrupt. Just because the truth has to be found doesn't mean that it needs to be shared with the intended victim."

"Apollo might be relieved to know what he's well away from-"

"Apollo already feels guilty. This won't help with that."

"And as for what I SHOULD do?"

"One, you will call whoever you talked to at Hill, Mendes, and Yao, and figure out exactly how this happened and whether they've had any other mail from Kristoph to deal with. If he's junior enough to get saddled with an assignment like this, he's junior enough to expect to be woken up in the middle of the night now and then. Two, you will, as they say, hold the fort. This is your home. They're yours for the time being."

"You brought me Klavier Gavin and you're leaving him on my couch."

"Yes."

"...All right."

"Keep your phone on. I'll call you once both boxes are taken care of."

"Understood."

"As soon as you give me your number…I don't know what it is anymore." And Phoenix showed him a string of numbers glowing on a tiny screen, and he copied them into his own directory, under the full name.

Once he was seated in the red car, he called Detective Skye. The night was even colder now, but he was too intent on the job at hand to really notice.

She picked up after two rings and a blip. "Mr. Edgeworth. You may be my favorite prosecutor, but that doesn't change the fact that it is..." - and he almost smiled when he heard her bite back profanity in favor of a turn of phrase she might have taken from him - "**quite **late."

"As it is, Detective, I'm calling about your LEAST favorite."

"Payne?" And despite everything, he almost laughed, because she'd slipped.

"About Klavier."

"GAVIN! What has that bitch gone and done?" **There **was the language.

"Not a thing, that I know of, but his elder brother has, apparently...sent him something." She waited, and he explained.

Her voice was dangerous when he finished. "There is a BOOBY TRAP in the Prosecutor's Office?"

"Unless it's at his apartment. Or at the Gavin house. Or it hasn't been delivered yet."

"He's my neighbor. Same apartment complex, anyway. I'll go look on his doormat and call you if something's there...otherwise I'll meet you at the office. But you're going to need someone who can get into the mailroom. Unless you want to wait until everyone comes into work tomorrow."

"I don't. But **you **can't get in?"

"I'm a DETECTIVE." She hadn't wanted to be. "I don't mail crap."

"Thank you, then. And I'll probably see you soon."

His next call was to Franziska. He couldn't imagine that she didn't know where packages were kept, given the volume of paperwork that she seemed to do.

The apartment phone rang until the answering machine picked it up, and her cell phone rang at least seven times before there was a rustling noise and someone answered.

It wasn't Franziska. It was Adrian Andrews. "Prosecutor...Edgeworth?" She still sounded somewhat timid, and there was an echo to her voice.

"Miss Andrews? Is my sister with you at present? I am sorry to interrupt your...evening, but an extraordinary situation has arisen at the Prosecutor's Office."

"Can it possibly be dealt with without her?" **That** was bolder than he remembered. "Sir, she's asleep. In my living room. On the couch. I don't know what it is that she's been given to work on, except that she's always hauling big crates of files back and forth, and she's AWFULLY tired." She seemed to guess what he was thinking. "I don't think she's ill, but she will be if she doesn't get some rest. So unless you need her specifically, I have to ask you to call someone else. I'm out in the hall so this conversation won't wake her." He blinked quite a few times, and nearly asked Adrian if **she** would know how to **break **in, until his brain put two and two together and he felt silly.

"I understand, Miss Andrews. Thank you for looking after my sister. Good night."

And so the last person he called was his old secretary, who had gotten him into his desk drawer with a bobby pin. And she was there in the office, with a ring of actual keys and looking perfectly put-together, when he and Ema both arrived. Box B had obviously not been at the apartment; Box A was wrapped back up in Wright's trash bag and deposited on the floor next to Ema's workbench.

All three of them put gloves on before entering the mailroom, and he and Ema were both armed with lights and spritz bottles. It was the head secretary, however, who located the package first, and she looked a bit faint when the test revealed the same smear of color on the uneven pages. They couldn't close things up right away after that; Ema insisted on going around the whole room with the spray afterwords, and then Klavier's office, and then Edgeworth's. It was fortunate that nothing else appeared to be tainted.

The detective then led Edgeworth back down to the lab, while the other woman stayed upstairs to boil water for tea. The two books that had been proven guilty went into something that looked like a large lightbox, and he asked what it was.

"That's the analyzer. It'll know in ten minutes whether those books match each other, and once I print this out-" (she whacked a button on her computer) "- we'll know whether they match Vera Misham's nail polish."

"I don't remember the process being so fast."

"It didn't use to be."

"Who invented this new method, then?" He knew the answer.

"I did. Can I ask you something, before we go back upstairs?"

"You can."

"What do you want to do with these things? I mean, if it turns out to be Kristoph, there is still no case."

"Crisp them, or maybe all of them but those two, in which case seal them up **tight**. Toss in the two letters. Write a report. Tell the Chief Prosecutor and nobody else. And bury it as deep as it will go."

"Understood, sir. But the head secretary? Will she tell anyone?"

"You're talking about the same woman who once fished some urgent documents out from under a boxed set of Steel Samurai discs in my office closet when I turned out to need them at City Hall THAT DAY, and never breathed a word about it. Also the same woman who lied to Manfred von Karma to his face and told him that I was in a private conference when I was actually right on the other side of the door and praying not to have to talk to him. Which I had not told her to do. She is discretion personified. And a very kind soul." Ema had a mixed smile on her face, amused and chastened.

"It's good to know that."

"About her? Or about the Steel Samurai?"

"Yeah."

The lightbox beeped. No surprises.

* * *

The three of them were seated quietly in Edgeworth's office with steaming teacups when he called Phoenix back.

"Hello?"

"The other box turned up here. And the atroquinine was Kristoph's. The rest of that storage unit, his house, his office, everything, will get sprayed down tomorrow. You should consider teaching your phone this number."

"I'll consider it, then. I talked to Very Junior Partner almost as soon as you left. And what **he** turned up was interesting. Apparently, there were **four **boxes of those books in storage, and they all looked very similar. Just with different marks on the sides. The will doesn't mention that."

"Go on."

"So he talked to the clerk flunky whose job it had been to drive over and actually get the stuff together, and found out that the flunky had seen all these very similar boxes and, of course, been unsure about which ones were meant. So, with the firm's authority, he contacted Kristoph to **ask**. Not too long after the sentencing. Apparently Hill and Mendes and Yao were as eager to be rid of him as the state of California was."

"So Kristoph had his pick."

"Right. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet that the two boxes still in there are clean."

"But he still would have had to have poisoned two of them long before everything went wrong for him."

"...Yes. Back when Apollo and Klavier were still loyal, as far as he knew."

Edgeworth sighed a long, heavy, melancholy sigh. "...It's not as though there's no precedent for that kind of thing."

"No."

"Wright...they honestly **do not need to know this**."

"...I'll trust your judgment."

"Please."

"It...it makes a kind of sense, with a theory I had about Kristoph. I mean, wicked as he was, there's no way he would have killed Zak if it were just about not being hired to be his defense. And no matter what he said, it wasn't just because he felt a particularly evil touch of evil that day."

"And what is your theory?"

"That he liked having, well, a human arsenal. People with unusual skills that could pull unusual strings for him."

"Like the Mishams."

"Just like the Mishams. Zak would have been an enormous prize, if you follow that line of thinking. The Gramarye abilities are outright supernatural."

"Which is a terrible thought."

"It is, isn't it." Wright paused. "So maybe it's even lucky..."

"Wright."

"I'm sorry. Anyway. The problem with having intelligent, unpredictable people on puppet strings is that they don't always STAY there."

"Like you didn't."

"I guess not." The other man was obviously discomfited by the idea of belonging to the same marionette show. "So if all your tools are potential threats as well, you need to be ready to neutralize them. Whether you think they're going to start talking, or they've outlived their usefulness, or you think they don't **respect **you properly. Which would explain Zak."

"And Apollo, and Klavier."

"Yes. They might not be magicians, but they're very, very good attorneys. And they made a matched set."

"Do you think he was really as disappointed by Klavier's becoming a prosecutor as he claimed to be?"

"No. Not for a minute. And one more thing. Apparently the bit in the letter about the books belonging to an old professor wasn't true. Junior Partner was just prepared to let it stand as what he thought of as a white lie. Kristoph bought those at auction."

"Ah."

"Klavier can stay here tonight, by the way. There's no need for you to come all the way back."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Vera is still here too, in Trucy's room. Trucy - made chamomile tea for everyone. Like Peter Rabbit."

Edgeworth closed his eyes at the poignant note in his old friend's voice.

"So when Vera started nodding, Trucy just offered to share her room and off they went. And Apollo and Klavier are curled up at opposite ends of my couch, asleep. Which makes it look kind of like a life raft. Miles?"

"What is it?"

"It still strikes me as strange that you came here. And you still have that habit of leaping to the worst conclusions..."

"I-"

"No, Miles – **thank you**."

"Thank you, Wright."


	5. Mock Trial

May 16, 12:04pm

Edgeworth dropped a pile of papers onto his desk, the detritus of what had been ultimately a very frustrating meeting with the harbor police and a few customs officials. Flag-of-convenience cases were inevitably sordid and always slow, and it hadn't helped that he'd been pulled into this straight from trying to doze in his office. Yesterday's events had left him with no energy to spare, and given Ema's tone in the hall earlier and the enormous cup of coffee on the head secretary's desk, he wasn't alone. Klavier had not come by this morning either, but this time seeing the motorcycle parked in the underground garage had been a relief. He thought about calling the Agency, and hesitated - and the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"I thought you might be wondering where Kristoph's orphanage had gotten off to this morning."

"The morning is over."

"I told you I hadn't been sleeping, thanks to Polly. And..."- the vaguely mocking tone dropped out of his voice - "If you must know, I woke up in a panic at about 4:30 and stuck my head into Trucy's room and the living room just to make sure everybody was still breathing. That was too close. That sadist."

"He **lost**, Wright. He died alone." There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Edgeworth felt a wash of yesterday's strange lightness. However much damage the elder Gavin had done, he'd lost and his last plan had failed. It was a kind of consolation and vindication for the last seven years.

"He lost, he died alone, and the Flopsy Bunnies are at the South Coast Botanic Garden today."

"Don't tell me that's your new collective term?"

"It takes some of the weirdness out of the fact that Trucy's more or less babysitting three people in their twenties."

"I had always thought that that was what you had Maya for."

"Touché."

It was so simple to slip back into this kind of talk - familiarity at a distance, half banter and half sincere, half argument and half empathy.

"They left before I woke up, and Polly's terrible car is missing. But there was a note on the table, saying where they were going, and that I apparently called Trucy in sick to school today. Also, they've invited you to People Park tomorrow."

"Me?"

"Well, it is a Saturday."

"That's not..."

"Miles, I don't know what they want from you. Just show up. Eleven am."

Without knowing quite what to think, he agreed to go.

* * *

_What made you willing to talk to that younger attorney in your office?_

* * *

As he was collecting his exit stub from the parking kiosk that evening, he heard a familiar voice, and looked up into the rearview to see Klavier next to his bike, leaning towards the rolled-down passenger-side window of a dented and badly painted black Honda compact. And he paused, in case he should say hello, or good night, but the conversation through the car window seemed to have caught a second wind, and so he simply went home.

* * *

May 17, 11:00 am

He arrived at the park exactly on time, and found Trucy and Vera Misham rolling out some big nubbly blankets and Klavier and Apollo Justice coming up the slope festooned with white plastic grocery bags. He strode over and offered to help with those, but was told, "Nein, nein, if you try to take one I will drop them all!" And it really wouldn't take three people to spread out a picnic blanket, so for a moment he was left just not knowing what to do with his hands.

Once bags and blankets were arranged, however, he found himself meeting everyone other than Klavier properly for the first time. Trucy stuck her hand out first and said, "You're Mr. Edgeworth. You're in a couple of Daddy's old photographs."

_Well, yes. But_ _woe betide anyone who tries to patronize this girl._ "And you're Trucy Wright. I'm glad to meet you after all this time."_ 'All this time?' What is she going to make of that?_

But her only response was, "Thank you for bringing Mr. Gavin yesterday," before stepping aside for Apollo Justice.

Apollo seemed sort of fidgety, but he had a firm handshake himself, and a forceful gaze. Actually...it wasn't just a gaze, it was a **look**, but not one that the senior attorney knew how to interpret. The young man said, "Mr. Edgeworth."

"Mr. Justice."

Trucy popped back. "You are SO gonna have to have a fight for which one is a better lawyer name." They both looked at her, derailed. "Just saying."

But it was probably a good thing that she'd said it, because they both made small that-was-a-bad-joke faces, and that moment of similarity was enough to turn things friendly and for Apollo to switch off the gimlet stare.

Vera Misham got to her feet, and it occurred to Edgeworth that she might not be any better about being touched than he was, and so he offered a slight bow in her direction instead. She ducked her head in reply, with enough of a pause before lifting it again that it was clearly a returned bow and not exclusively shyness.

And then there was Klavier waiting at the end of the row of people.

"Prosecutor Gavin, I seem to recall that we've already been introduced."

"I think you might be right. And I was standing here, thinking what a coincidence it was how much you looked like a certain man I need to thank." And Klavier shook his hand, letting his tired but playful face drop long enough to shoot Edgeworth a look of clouded acknowledgement and of gratitude. "I find myself further in your debt."

"I wouldn't worry about it."

The plastic bags turned out to contain quite a lot of food, which had to have taken several stops to obtain. Croissants, Fuji apples, oranges, corned beef sandwiches from Canter's Delicatessen. Garlic chicken from Versailles. Buttery cookies that were apparently from some little bakery in the South Bay. Mexican sodas. Japanese candy.

* * *

_Do you usually eat alone?_

* * *

The poses that the four of them adopted to eat were illustrative. Trucy lay flat on her stomach. Vera knelt, as if holding such a position wasn't at all uncomfortable, and balanced a paper plate on her knees. Apollo sat cross-legged, compact and polite. And Klavier, the showoff, lay on his side, propped up on one elbow like a Roman emperor.

Klavier's hands were still swollen. Apollo's dark circles were still visible. And Vera Misham was clearly still somewhat tense about being out in the world at all. And the thin springtime sun poured down on them all, and Edgeworth suddenly found himself taking off his jacket and folding one leg over the other and asking Vera for an orange. So what if the picture was preposterous. He was starting to suspect that his life to date had suffered a picnic and preposterousness deficiency. He did have to ask, though: "Trucy, where is your father?"

"Late," she said promptly and without the slightest concern. Edgeworth thought back to the telephone conversation where he'd been invited, and to Phoenix's sharp remark about Trucy being the babysitter. _Maybe he's stalling?_

It struck him as sad that Phoenix found this quartet awkward. They were, he supposed, rather quiet, but he was nothing if not a connoisseur of silence, and this was a comforting one. And everyone being quiet together seemed far preferable to everyone being quiet alone.

They had nearly finished eating when a figure in a sweatshirt appeared at the end of the path.

"Daddy!" Trucy sat up and waved, and Phoenix walked a little faster, though he didn't wave back. In fact, it seemed as though he was avoiding looking at the group of people sitting on the blankets, which meant that he actually stepped back in surprise when he saw Edgeworth sitting on the ground with his jacket off.

"They've gotten to you that quickly?"

"Here, daddy, we weren't going to pack the food back up before you'd had anything." Trucy dished out a truly huge portion of Cuban chicken, two apples, and a handful of cookies, then whisked everything that remained into a bag and ran it over to a man sitting at one of the chess tables by himself, next to a grocery cart. Apollo kept an eye on her, but made no move to follow.

Phoenix walked over to a bench on the far side of the park's fountain, sat down, and quirked one of his jagged eyebrows at Edgeworth, who followed.

"You aren't going to sit with them?"

"And miss out on the show?"

"What?" At that moment, he realized that only the two girls were sitting where the picnic had been. Apollo and Klavier were already walking back from the parking lot, the former awkwardly holding a blue nylon bag with stars on it and the latter with a guitar case and a big sketching tablet banded shut. A breeze had started to blow, and the falling water of the fountain got louder.

Phoenix took advantage of the noise to ask, "How was the picnic?"

"Peaceful."

"Not 'peculiar'?"

"Peaceful."

"Your therapist may be doing too good a job."

"Dr. Crow. He asks a lot of useful questions. Or makes me ask them of myself."

* * *

_And how about your old friends? Have you talked to them?_

* * *

"Is Justice teaching you how to drive?"

"A little bit. Even though he's barely been at it himself long enough to qualify. And he hates it."

"I don't think I'd like teaching you to drive either."

"Don't be silly. I'm a perfect lamb." Phoenix glanced past the fountain and snorted, so Edgeworth had to look too. Apollo had gotten one of Trucy's strings of flags caught on one of his vest buttons.

"Should I really not have brought Klavier to the agency ?"

"Given what would have happened if you DIDN'T? It's fine...and even if we set that part of topic aside, it's...fine. I imagine that it was good for he and Polly to see each other. You were probably right about the mentor business."

Trucy had also strung a slackline up between the trunks of two short trees. When Edgeworth glanced up again, she was standing in the middle of it and cajoling everyone else to try. Vera made it about two feet along at a glacial pace before abruptly landing on the grass - with a flick of an actual smile.

"So why were you late to lunch?"

No reply.

"Because I was here?"

"It has nothing to do with you, Edgeworth, you're just vain." Short, muscular Apollo got nearly to the second tree, then fell off spectacularly. "I just find it a little...wearying, how innocent they seem. They're outright cute."

"And something is the matter with that?"

"How do they get away with it?"

"Away with..."

"I remember my twenties. I was an adult. I was NEVER that cute. Never such a kid."

_Was that supposed to be a joke? _In the middle of the wire, Klavier lost his balance, flinging arms and one leg out sideways to no avail.

"All right, so you didn't spend your Saturdays playing in the park, but..."

"If Gavin there hadn't taken his brother's inside tip, I would never have lost my badge. And if Vera had never made the forgery, same thing."

"And if Trucy hadn't been convinced to hand it to you?"

"Trucy was a child."

"And the others were teenage dupes. Are you able to forgive that?"

"Anyone who looked at them would forgive them on the spot. They're the Flopsy Bunnies." They were indeed flopped back on the picnic blankets. Vera was sketching on colored paper with what looked like pastels, and Klavier was playing an acoustic guitar, not singing. A few bars of the music made it through the noise of the fountain - that song again, the one Edgeworth hadn't been able to place.

But Wright knew. ""And when I find the reason...'"

"...'I still can't get used to it'."

* * *

May 26, 3:00pm

Phoenix had taken a break from studying and gone for a walk around the block. When he came back through the Agency door, Apollo was on the phone.

"...of COURSE I've heard of...well, no, not in any, um, DETAIL..." He had his hand up to his face in the gesture that meant he was thinking furiously. "But you said Ivy?" He caught sight of Phoenix crossing the room. "...know what? You're on. Go ahead and laugh." And he hung up the phone with a strange, determined expression. "Mr. Wright?"

"What is it, Apollo?"

"I have a case for you!"

Phoenix gestured at his disastrous pile of books and notes. "See those, Polly? Not actually a lawyer at the moment."

"It doesn't matter! I need your help! It's the only way I'll win!" And something about his face reminded Phoenix of Trucy in the midst of plotting a magic trick. That wasn't just determination, was it - it was **mischief**. "Sir, you went to Ivy University, didn't you?"

"Back in the day..."

"That...that was Klavier."

_Him again?_

"I guess the school called the Prosecutor's Office and someone knew that they should ask HIM about this. And he called me."

"About WHAT?"

"Ivy wants to hold a, a mock trial for the pre-law students. With, um, real lawyers."

"Sounds perfect for Herr Showbiz."

"But he asked me to be the defense."

"Sounds good. You usually win. I'll bring the popcorn."

"You can't! I need you to be my ASSISTANT!"

_What._

"...What?"

"It's not a real trial. Or a real crime. It's like a show. And if that's all it is, I'll NEVER win...but if he doesn't know I'm bringing YOU...Sir?"

"Who are we defending?"

"...I have no idea."

"Now you're talking. But I'm not your assistant."

May 26, 3:10pm

"Grey Eminence?"

"Klavier, do you need something? I ask because you're leering at my desk."

"I need a secret weapon."

Edgeworth put his pen down and looked over the top of his glasses. "You need what?"

"You wouldn't miss Herr Wright's first trial...NEW first trial, would you?"

"Of course not." Klavier grinned. "But he's not taking the bar until July." Klavier grinned more.

"This would not be the most...by-the-book sort of trial that we are talking about."

"Is he in some kind of trouble again?" His voice had gotten sharp.

"No, no, not at all." And Klavier explained.

"You see, I KNOW that Apollo is asking Wright right now - hm, Wright right - to be the other half of his defense team. Forehead no doubt thinks I did not think of that."

_Undignified. But..._"This is solely an exercise?"

"Ja. A performance. A show."

"And it doesn't matter who wins?"

"Not in the least. Except for who gets to do the gloating afterwards."

_It's not as though I haven't always WANTED to do this._

"Gavin, I hereby accept the role of co-counsel."

"Strictly speaking, I had not offered it to you yet."

"Oh, be quiet."

He almost obeyed - at least, his tone of voice dropped as he handed Edgeworth a manila folder. "Once you have a look."

Inside were two large pieces of colored drawing paper. One was black. "Ah, not that one…I think that will be my next, ah...album cover. This one. Vera sent it for you." The light blue sheet featured a drawing of the People Park fountain, spray caught in the wind. Barely visible through the mist was a park bench, and barely visible on the bench were two people. Edgeworth looked at it, and he caught himself reaching for his elbow with one hand.

"Thank her for me."

* * *

May 30, 3:45pm

They all ended up in the Dean's Office on a Friday afternoon - but not all at once. Apollo and Klavier had been identically insistent that their mysterious "assistants" wait in the hall at first. Phoenix and Edgeworth had been identically insistent that they were not assistants.

"I think the theatrics have already gone to Polly's head."

The older men were looking with no real interest at a bulletin board listing film screenings, graduate student job talks, and bicycle safety tips.

"Is the campus how you remember it?"

"I know it's bigger...it feels smaller, though."

"No _way_." They both turned around at the third voice, which belonged to a thin, rumpled young man wearing a very clever t-shirt and in need of a haircut. "Phoenix **Wright** and Miles **Edgeworth**."

Shades of Nina the Bartender. Phoenix said, "We can't introduce YOU, I'm afraid?"

"Spencer Langley. PhD candidate. Legal history. In awe. WAIT. Are you here to see the dean?"

"Yes. Though is that really his name?"

"Dean Dean? Yeah, I know, and yes, it is. But are you here for the..."

"The mock trial? Yes. Are you involved with it?"

The kid looked like he'd just been given ice cream. "I'm the judge."

* * *

"I see you've met Spencer!" The dean was a polished man, not overly tall, generically smug. "He was so gracious as to step in when our original judge turned out to have a scheduling conflict."

Spencer still looked like the proverbial cat with the proverbial canary. "I may never complain about being a scholarship slave again."

"So. Gentlemen...the CRIME." The dean rubbed his hands together. "A few weeks ago, our baseball team played a home game. And our mascot was not present. Now, this was actually due to a minor dispute between the athletics department and the student who wears the costume, but the fact remains that his absence - after the PA system mistakenly announced his grand entrance - was conspicuous, and later noted by the campus newspaper in a rather embarrassing article. So what I would like you to address is the question of who cravenly attacked the mascot and, by so doing, prevented him from performing that night. Of course, no one DID, you understand, but..."

"I hate mascots," said Phoenix.

"Pardon?"

"Doesn't matter. Sorry. Who's the defendant?"

"Another scholarship holder like Spencer here. Those students who are awarded free tuition from the university, and not from an outside source, are frequently asked to take part in various activities on the school's behalf."

"I see. And the evidence?"

"The testimony of the mascot and of his alleged assailant. The costume. Anything else is up to you."

Apollo broke in. "What do you mean, up to us?"

"Feel free to go see the stadium, to talk to other students, what have you. Consider it something like improvisational theater." Phoenix's eyes lit up. "Spencer, of course, will have the ability to exclude any dubious evidence."

"Dean, this isn't much of a case."

"But I trust that you can make it one! Gentlemen, I will see you a week from Saturday."

* * *

The five of them walked down the hall and out towards the nearby parking lot after the dean's secretary politely shooed them out. Spencer looked embarrassed. "Look, I'm sorry about how picayune and cheap this is turning out to be. I know you all have better things to do with your time..."

"Ach, don't worry. We can work with this." Klavier smacked him on the shoulder and he nearly lost his balance. "Sorry."

Phoenix seemed interested in something else. "So when you called yourself a scholarship slave, it was participating in things like this that you meant?"

"Right. To keep your free ride, you have to maintain a high GPA - 3.85 at least - but you also get called on to do all kinds of things for the school. And most of it sucks, to be honest. Showing visiting speakers around town. Calling names at graduation. TAing for that class for freshmen who haven't picked a major yet. And it's lucky Vaishali's advisor pulled her off of this to go to a conference the same weekend; she's really shy. She didn't want to be the judge."

"I don't remember the scholarship students having to do all that when I was here."

"Well, I get the impression that it's Dean's idea. At least, it's always him who asks. I don't mean to complain too much, you know? A free degree is hard to beat, especially when tuition goes up every year. But between the academic requirements and the special favors, a lot of us end up losing the scholarship partway through. I've been lucky, though; I've only got one year to go after this."

"Hmm."

"Anyway, this is my shuttle stop. Insanely cool to meet you. See you in court!" Spencer hopped onto a bus just as it arrived, and the four attorneys were left at the curb. Apollo gave both Klavier and Edgeworth a challenging look.

"Just so you know. We've taken the precaution of enlisting another assistant. AND a sketch artist." And he turned towards the rattly black car.

Phoenix chimed in over his shoulder. "That would make one bunny to three, Edgeworth. Polly, are you going to let me drive back?" Apollo shuddered.

The prosecution continued towards the red car. Klavier sounded honestly confused. "Bunny?"

* * *

May 30, 5:51pm

"A MOCK trial? Fop, are you out of your airbrushed little mind?" Ema was absolutely livid. "As if you don't pile me up with enough REAL work to do?"

"This is real work. It's outreach." Edgeworth initially hadn't been sure why he'd been dragged into this conversation, until Klavier had made the point that his presence might keep Ema from losing her temper so badly that she stopped listening.

"**OUTREACH**. Outrage, is more like it. There must be someone lower on the totem pole you can torment with this."

"No one else I want to involve."

"Oh, REALLY, fop? WHY does it HAVE to be ME?"

Klavier made a gesture that outlined an invisible box. "...because of your blinkenlights."

"WHAT?"

"Your machines. Your gadgets. Your clever inventions. You aren't always allowed to use them, ja? Bring them. Use them! And if you need time to prepare, hand one of your new cases off to Nguyen."

"My...machines?"

Klavier flourished one hand and bowed so low he nearly hit his head on the workbench. "Fraulein Skye, I want you to blind them..."

"Don't even say it. You'll never, ever be Thomas Dolby. And Nguyen gets that food truck nightmare case."

"Perfection." He bowed again, spun in place, and strode out. Edgeworth stayed for a moment longer.

"Detective? Thank you again for...the books."

"YOU'RE welcome. HE'S bizarre."

"It comes with the territory."

Bizarre was waiting in the hallway. "You may want to inform Herr Wright that even if he has a sketch artist, WE have a mad scientist."

"In multiple senses of the word." He felt better saying that than saying that he probably wouldn't be talking to Wright before the day of.

* * *

June 7, 9:55am

Someone with limited resources had at least **tried** to make the small lecture hall resemble a courtroom. A large lectern was standing in for the judge's bench, and a pair of long tables had been placed facing each other on either side of the room. Filling the seats were clusters of students, in both giggling-undergraduate and wry-graduate flavors. Enough of them were girls in Gavinners t-shirts that Apollo took Klavier aside, in the audiovisual booth where the attorneys were hiding, and insisted (more like threatened) that there was to be NO air guitar, under pain of DEATH, AGONIZING DEATH, to which Klavier agreed **awfully **easily. Ema was setting things out at one of the tables. Trucy, with Vera's help, was doing the same at the other. It had been an interesting week.

At a few minutes after ten, Spencer Langley appeared and strode down the main aisle toward the lectern. He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses (that had not been evident during the meeting in the dean's office) and a tweed jacket over a black t-shirt with something written on it. Edgeworth smirked at Klavier's obvious attempt to discover whether it was another Gavinners shirt or not. It wasn't.

"But the judge simply wants to avoid the appearance of bias. I'm sure he loves me."

"Be quiet." That was Edgeworth and Apollo in unison.

Spencer took his place at the lectern, while another young man of about the same age leaned against the back wall behind him. He glanced up at the booth window, and Apollo and Klavier marched out the door and into the room.

Cell phone cameras clicked. They took their places. There was a longish pause, enough for a few people in the audience to wonder if everyone was waiting for the national anthem, and then Phoenix (wouldn't you know it, still dressed like a bum) and Edgeworth appeared and started their own walk towards the tables. There were startled noises from some of the graduate students in the audience, and the end result was that more phones came out and a string of professors and people's friends appeared, gradually over the next hour, and took seats.

As they assumed their own spots, farther from the lectern, Edgeworth couldn't stop himself giving Wright a devilish smile across the courtroom. And Wright shot him one back. And it was almost as much fun to see, out of the corner of his eye, Klavier and Apollo fixing each other with the same look. In fact, that was sort of a relief. There was such a thing as being **too **civilized.

Spencer banged the gavel (at least there was a gavel), dropped it, picked it back up, and said, "Is the defense ready?"

"YES!" Apollo's startlingly loud courtroom voice made several members of the audience jump.

"Is the prosecution ready?"

"The prosecution," said Klavier, "was **born **ready."

* * *

The school newspaper, the Leaf (what could you do) made a special print run a few days later to produce a transcript of the entire thing. The regular Monday edition, however, included a rundown of what turned out to be the story, along with a lengthy selection of highlights. The morning included:

• audience members from Lambda Rho fraternity being threatened with ejection for yelling "DA **SPENCER** OF **JUSTICE**!" the first few times Judge Langley managed to use the gavel successfully.

• the college mascot appearing on the stand, in costume, to testify that he had indeed had every intention of appearing between innings, and would have done so had he not been attacked by person or persons unknown while leaving the fieldhouse through the back door, and thus rendered unconscious. Key to fieldhouse noted stolen.

• the defense expressing doubt that anyone COULD be knocked unconscious while wearing what looked like a Swamp Thing costume with a built-in helmet.

• the prosecution calling an eager young MFA student and self-defense instructor, who very happily pointed out how it would be simple to incapacitate someone in such a costume. Detective Ema Skye helpfully projecting a rotating 3D visual of the moves described. (She described it as a hologram, but the Leaf preferred the word "cartoon.") Judge goggling at Detective Ema Skye.

• the sullen defendant taking the stand to say that sure, whatever, fine, he beat up the mascot, and thanks Dean for ruining his weekend.

• the judge and the prosecution and the audience looking at the defendant with their mouths open.

• the defense asking him to demonstrate the moves featured in the prosecution's cartoon -OBJECTION! - hologram, and the defendant saying he couldn't.

• the senior member of the prosecution irritably recommending that he ought to at least TRY.

• the defendant falling over his own feet and being escorted off to Student Health with a badly scraped shin. Profanity involved.

• the defense pointing out to the judge that the inability of THIS suspect to knock down the man in the mascot suit meant there must have been multiple assailants. Judge gratefully accepting this supposition.

• an influx of spare Student Health staff into the audience.

• the mascot's wallet and laptop revealed by the defense as having gone missing from fieldhouse.

• the mascot's wallet and laptop revealed by prosecution as having been found in leaf pile across campus. Gardener called as surprise witness. Influx of gardening staff into the audience. Analyzer used to point out match between some of the leaves found on laptop case and the plants grown behind the fieldhouse, where the case might have been dropped mid-getaway, and not anything from the Biological Sciences flowerbeds, source of the leaf pile. Judge continuing to goggle at Detective Ema Skye.

• a double objection from the defense at withholding of evidence, complete with double pounding on table.

• the collapse of the table.

• the bailiff being ordered to replace said table.

• the bailiff being reminded by Judge Langley that he IS the bailiff, Matt, you dumbass.

• the alacritous departure of the bailiff.

* * *

Spencer called an early recess so that the replacement table would have time to arrive. Edgeworth saw Phoenix say something to Trucy, who hurried off. The dean had appeared at some point and was circulating through the crowd, shaking hands. Apollo and Klavier were already talking in the middle of the room.

"Do you think we could have the registrar forward the judge's grades and attendance records to the court district?"

"Mein Gott, yes, we should appoint him on an emergency basis YESTERDAY."

Spencer himself appeared at Edgeworth's elbow. "The DETECTIVE."

"Hm."

"Sir, please. I'm begging. Introduce me."

"After the trial concludes, Your Honor."

* * *

Matt arrived with a new table and a sizeable contingent from the Facilities department, and Trucy returned just a moment later. The Leaf's highlights from the afternoon:

• the prosecution's assertion that the theft of the wallet and laptop were a mere ruse to disguise the REAL crime: the reprogramming of the scoreboard. Initial evidence: a video of the baseball game, taken by the team archivist, with a flickering bulb clearly visible in one corner of the board.

• the video's inclusion of the seventh-inning stretch. Revelation of the Ivy baseball team's presence in the audience. Demand for singalong to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Accompaniment to same provided by junior member of the prosecution, with real guitar.

• a strenuous objection from the junior member of the defense on grounds of irrelevance and volume.

• a counter-objection from the junior member of the prosecution that singing a SONG is not TESTIMONY, and that in cases of this nature, a sense of community spirit is always valuable. Counter-objection sustained.

• the senior member of the defense's pointedly calling attention back to the flickering scoreboard bulb and the alleged importance of same.

• testimony from a member of the athletic department staff that the scoreboard had been scheduled for maintenance only a week before the incident and should have been in perfect working order.

• a query from the junior member of defense re: the actual point of making one miserable scoreboard bulb flash.

• a scathing retort from Detective Ema Skye re: Morse code.

• the rapid transcription of short and long flashes by the defense's sketch artist, followed by transliteration from Morse by the senior member of the defense. Assertion that the only thing the result could possibly spell might be an eye chart.

• the suave response from the senior prosecutor that no one had actually claimed that the flickers WERE Morse code. Alternative numerical interpretation offered: Dewey Decimal System.

• the junior member of the defense pointing out that Dewey Decimals are applicable only in libraries - and that anyway, these numbers would be incomplete by that standard.

• the use of the holographic system to present a 3-D map of Ivy Library, cross-indexed with Dewey Decimals. Point made that Ivy Library is arranged such that titles with similar numbers but with different initial digits are arranged above and below one another on different floors - and that only a few floors would offer someone with a set of binoculars a view of the scoreboard. Screening of corroborative video from hat camera.

• the judge goggling at Detective Ema Skye. Senior member of the defense pointedly interrupting to say that yes, as demonstrated by their equipment and their apparel, the prosecution has clearly mastered the technology of the 1880s, the 1980s, and today, but how is this relevant to the attack on the mascot? Judge retorting that senior member of defense really is a sarcastic prick, isn't he?

• testimony from the head librarian re: materials kept in relevant sections on each of those floors. Only the ninth floor is of interest: some of the rarest books in the collection are there. Except, says the junior prosecutor, they AREN'T there. They're missing.

• calling of campus security guard to stand to testify about the night of the game. Guard's confession that the only security personnel in the non-residential parts of campus would all have reported to the scene of the attack, leaving the library undefended.

• the junior member of the defense asking just how many "personnel" that was. Guard answering three, ever since budget cuts and union dispute. Dismay in audience.

• the prosecution calling Dean Martin Dean to the stand. Oath administered on something in complimentary book cover from university bookstore.

• the senior member of the prosecution presenting Dean with Ivy University press release claiming increase in endowments and bank records verifying same.

• the dean nodding proudly.

• the junior member of the defense presenting a series of bills demonstrating tuition hikes. Dean nodding less proudly.

• the dean presented with list of questions by the senior member of the defense:

-Why is the campus short of security guards?  
-Why was the scoreboard never actually repaired?  
-Where are the rare books?  
-Why is it made difficult for students to retain scholarships granted directly by the school?  
-So where is all of the money?

• the dean's smile fixing in place.

• the junior member of the prosecution reminding Dean that he is under oath.

• the dean pointing out that this is a MOCK trial and attempting to leave.

• Bailiff Matt blocking the door and the senior member of the defense removing a complimentary book cover from a Gideon Bible from the Gatewater Hotel.

• the dean's breakdown.

• the appearance of the campus police.

* * *

Vera Misham had made a number of excellent sketches of the various participants in the drama, but the image that became famous was not one of hers. It was a photograph, or a set of photographs, taken simultaneously from different angles on dozens of cell phones, of the dean's arrest. At the moment of his being assisted into a squad car, surrounded by an angry mix of students and academics and staff, someone hit him in the face with a flying quadruple-decker ham sandwich.

* * *

Before they had managed to leave, Trucy had seemingly talked to everyone in the audience who had recorded any part of the proceedings, and collected electronic copies of the footage from all of them. She was going to make a video for Pearl and Maya, she said. And for anyone else who hadn't been there. Which was fine with Phoenix, except that she then wanted to go to the drugstore that evening to get the entire collection copied onto a few physical discs, and then wanted to go for dinner afterwards. And then she had a show at the Wonder Bar, which Phoenix walked her to, and he was pretty much pleased with himself but exhausted by the time he made it back to their building. She'd been understanding about his not having the energy to stay through the performance, so long as he came back to walk her home.

Later, he wondered how everything would have played out if he **had **stayed at the bar for the duration.

As it was, though, the front door of the building was already open a crack, and he made a mental note to scold Polly about it - until he opened the door and saw Polly already there. With Klavier.

Apollo was standing on the first step, while Klavier was at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the railing.

He'd walked in on a kiss goodnight.

And, more than the kiss, Apollo had one hand held flat in midair, as if he were resting it against an invisible window, while Klavier's other hand lay carefully against his forearm. And Apollo's bracelet had fallen to cover Klavier's callused fingertips as they rested on his wrist.

A terrible wistfulness coated the inside of Phoenix's ribs with cold, and he shoved back out the front door and fled down the block.


	6. Strides

June 7, 8:50pm

His sandals scuffed in quick time over the pavement. He had his head down and his hands in his pockets. And he couldn't make any sense of his own behavior, but that didn't stop the tingles of sour ice in his chest.

So his apprentice had a boyfriend. So what.

The street got darker as he passed the last of the bulk of the Gatewater and its blazing windows. Most of the other businesses were closed.

He wondered if Trucy knew.

Of _course _Trucy knew.

The thought irritated him even more. Why would they all have to keep it a secret from him?

Because he might react like this.

Storming down the street in the dark. Absolutely ridiculous. He stopped outside the shoe repair shop, closed of course at this hour. It was dark but for the blue neon sign in the window and the tiny reflections of the streetlights in the glass of the counter. There was nothing to see. He kept moving, kept putting distance between himself and the office.

Tried to ask himself rational questions. What if it had been some perfect stranger Apollo had been wishing good night?

He'd probably have cleared his throat _really _loudly, just to watch them jump. And teased Polly mercilessly, tomorrow. Which would have been fun.

What if it had been Vera Misham?

Vera had done as much to wreck his career as Klavier had ever done. But the image of Apollo with her on the stairs actually seemed rather sweet, when he called it up. He might even have managed to refrain from clearing his throat, for the shy girl's sake.

He paused in place, under a dark dusty sidewalk ficus with graffiti carved into its trunk, testing his feelings as he would a chair that might not support his weight. Was his problem honestly that Klavier was _male_?

No, the pit of his stomach told him. Which was a relief, as he had to admit that it would have been a little hypocritical otherwise.

Well, fine; what if it had been Klavier and somebody else? That would have made their presence inside HIS front door hard to explain, and he would DEFINITELY have done his best to embarrass them, but it wouldn't have done all that much to dampen his mood.

He crossed an empty intersection without pushing the button, hunching his shoulders against the red light.

He was stuck being honest now, because he'd run out of options. The problem wasn't either of them, as much as he would have LOVED to blame this (what _was _this, anyway) on Klavier. The problem was both of them together.

The simplicity of it was what had frozen his ribs. The simplicity and the sweetness of the kiss and of the gesture with the bracelet. How could it possibly be so easy?

It _wasn't_ possible. He'd worked so hard, and still it had taken _years_, to convince himself that the honest, broke defense attorney with goofy hair did _not_ wind up in any kind of a romance with his rival. A rival who was whip-smart and weird as hell and whose hair shone like precious metal under the skylight in his own _front hall_...

To his horror, his eyes started to prickle at that. It wasn't as though everything _else_ had been easy, for the past several years. And that idea had been hard enough to finally swallow without having it lodge in his throat. He'd done all the work of giving up. It was unfair, it was _unjust_, that now he was being shown that it _could_ happen. Just not to _him_.

He was standing outside of a convenience store and had been there for several minutes. Long enough for the clerk in a cheap green vest to notice him and point at the LED sign that displayed the current lottery jackpot and shoot him a questioning look. Phoenix was jolted back to the outside world, and needed to collect himself for a second before he could shake his head _nah_ at the vest. The clerk shrugged back, _what then_? Phoenix shook his head again, more disgusted this time. The clerk's eyes got a smidgen harder, and he tapped a placard stuck to the inside of the glass: NO LOITERING.

Phoenix rolled his eyes, a big theatrical demonstration of what bullshit he thought this was, and stepped away from the window.

This street dead-ended in about four blocks. One way or another, he'd have to turn around and go home.

He didn't like that he was envious. They were nice kids. But then, he'd been a nice kid himself, and what good had that done him?

The apartment was dark when he got back, and he didn't bother to check who else was home.

* * *

June 9, 7:51am

Franziska's office door was already open when Edgeworth arrived in the office on Monday morning, even though he was early himself - the summer light had made it emphatically through the gap between the curtains, and once he'd given up on _trying_ to sleep, there was no appeal to _pretending _to sleep.

In the weeks since Adrian Andrews had made a point of telling him that his sister was tired, he'd made a few brief attempts to ask what it was she was working on, but she'd deflected them all. This morning he made up his mind to ask again.

She was engrossed in her laptop when he walked in, and didn't notice his polite knock on the doorframe. He coughed. She didn't look up.

"Good morning, little sister."

She met his eyes at the sound but managed not to flinch. "Good morning, little brother."

"You look tired."

"You sound impertinent."

Some of the file boxes were still stacked next to her desk. "It's not merely on my own behalf that I mention it."

"Whose then?"

"Miss Andrews is concerned for you."

Her voice dropped, but her tone was still businesslike. "Concern is something that Adrian excels in."

"Is she right to worry?"

Franziska rested her forehead against the knuckles of her right hand so briefly that she might just have been brushing something away. "I... I can't say."

"_Franziska_..."

"If you trusted me enough to come back from Germany with me on a seeming whim, you can trust me for a little bit longer!"

"I have _always _trusted you."

She actually winced a bit at that. "Yes. I know."

And Detective Gumshoe chose that moment to appear in the doorway, carrying a pair of manila folders, and so for the time being he had to be satisfied with that.

He returned to his office, poured some tea, and spent a few minutes watching the vapor curl into the air from the cup and tapping a fountain pen against the document he was ostensibly reading.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there when Klavier came in. The younger attorney's posture was uncharacteristically relaxed - or rather, genuinely relaxed instead of an artful depiction of relaxation. He was also looking around and smiling, just a little, at Edgeworth, at the bookshelf, at the view - in short, at nothing in particular. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. And strangest of all, he didn't say anything.

Edgeworth looked at him steadily. The young man pressed his lips together, looking almost abashed, and raised one hand and _waved_. He looked colossally silly.

"Klavier?"

"Hm? Ja?"

A long pause. "...would there be a new ...song you're working on?"

A radiant smile, quick as the wave. "JA, Herr Edgeworth. That is a way to put it. I have found myself a new song..."

"Congratulations." Klavier smiled like that again, and Edgeworth gave him a smaller one back.

"You have reminded me, though. I really do have new songs...on Halloween, you can hear them...if you would go so far as to attend a party?"

"Seeing as I have recently learned how to comport myself at a picnic...I think that might be a reasonable next step."

"I'll hold you to it!" And Klavier drifted out the door.

* * *

_Are you looking for any kind of romance?_

* * *

Once again the senior prosecutor smiled, a very slight but only partially rueful smile, and looked back down at his papers.

Approximately fifteen seconds later, his telephone rang. He glanced at the ceiling philosophically and answered it.

"This is Miles Edgeworth?"

"Oh, good, you're there. I wasn't sure this was the right number, y'know? I actually called Nick for it, but he wasn't there and I had to ask Polly-"

"Hello?"

"You seriously don't recognize my voice, you...investigative genius? Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, THIS is the Master of Kurain."

"_Maya_?" In the past, he'd called her Miss Fey, but somehow the years of fond memories had put them on a first-name basis in his mind. He wondered if he'd offended her.

But then, she wasn't easy to offend. "Of COURSE Maya. Name and occupation. It's that easy."

"Ah, what can I...how are..." It had been so long he had no idea what to ask, and every option sounded wrong.

"Trucy sent Pearl that mock trial video. Now all the little kids in town want to be lawyers because they think it involves breaking furniture and singing songs and throwing food."

"And you're calling me for...an apology? Or...letters of recommendation?"

"Neither. I'm calling with an invitation."

"What?"

"It's got nothing to do with the kids. Just you. Kind of. Get your butt up here this weekend, cravat."

"Well...what for?"

"If you still need me to tell you once you're here, I will. But you're a smart guy." A quick farewell and she hung up.

Damned if he knew why. But he'd go.

He opened the office door, thinking he'd sort of stare out at the bullpen for a moment and that it might motivate him to productivity, and was treated to the sight of Gumshoe disappearing towards the elevators with another of those cartons, saying to himself over and over, "Twenty_-nine_."

* * *

June 14, 11:22am

Maya herself was waiting for him at the bus stop when he arrived that Saturday. Kurain was far enough inland that the summer heat was oppressive, without even a tease of motion in the air. Her short robe and sandals seemed far more practical in this climate and setting than they had in the city in winter, even if they were more ornamented than they'd been.

"Oof!" She'd thrown her arms around him, hard. Served him right for not remembering that she said hello like that.

"Video doesn't lie...you DO look cute with glasses."

"And the trappings of mastery suit you."

"The...oh, the robe and the jewelry. Yeah. Not the sandals, though, I just ordered those. It's nice to get mail."

He'd done his share of that, he supposed - buying things he didn't particularly need, partly to have the sense that something good was coming. It hadn't made moving any easier.

"At least it wasn't an antique tea set."

"But it WAS a Steel Samurai Limited Collector's Vault Edition, with the book and the figurines, last month."

"The book isn't bad."

"Will's interviews are great."

He had assumed that they'd be going into the manor, but instead they were ambling up the main road through the village. Not that there was much of it; soon they'd have to turn around and go back the other way, unless she was planning on walking out into the dry woods.

She noticed him looking ahead and said, "Don't worry. We're not dressed for it."

"I'm certainly not, anyway."

"You know, we spirit mediums DO wear reasonable clothing in some circumstances."

"I don't remember that."

She pointed at herself. "Master now."

"I congratulate you on your pragmatism."

"It was easy. I bribed the younger ones with jeans and the older ones with comfortable shoes." They'd reached the little wooden shrine that marked the edge of town, and she paused before crossing the road to return. "Nick looked good in that video."

They'd all looked kind of grainy, honestly. He followed her across the dusty street and she continued. "I mean, he was still dressed like a bum. But he had that GRIN he used to get. I haven't seen that in forever."

"Do you see him often?"

"Often enough, I guess?" Her tone indicated _not really_, but sounded more resigned than tragic. "He comes up now and then. It's been a while. Since before the Misham mess, actually. Sometimes he sends just Trucy up to visit Pearl. And we talk every couple of weeks.

"But that's how it is NOW. Y'know, I lost touch with him for a while too, after he lost his badge. No, I don't like that phrase. That makes it sound like some kind of laundry accident or something. After his badge was taken away."

Edgeworth hadn't expected that. "How? Or...why?"

She sighed hard through her nose, a little angry. "He wasn't acting like himself. Especially without you around. And I couldn't visit forever. There's more to do up here than it looks like. I offered to take Trucy back up the mountain and look after her, until he got on his feet, but he just exploded then. That Kurain was crazy. That my family was crazy. That hadn't Trucy been through enough? Pearls was there and she burst into tears. So I was all set to go, y'know? And his new friend was a creep, anyway."

"You mean Gavin."

"Yeah. BRRRRR. So it was nearly two years, until Pearl sent him a card, and he sent her one back, and me one. To apologize."

"I'm sorry."

"To who? I don't need you to say you're sorry, you're probably sorry…but did you have a reason for bugging out like you did?"

He stared over the roofline, at the needles of the scrubby trees reflecting the summer sun at one another. "Yes. I had a reason."

"What WAS it?"

He didn't answer.

"Look, I told you what mine was. Yours couldn't be MUCH pettier."

"Gavin."

"Gavin...you just didn't like him? That's kind of inadequate...wait, how is that even possible? You left, like, TWO DAYS after he got disbarred. He wasn't palsy-walsy with the creepshow yet."

"Gavin."

"EDGEWORTH." He jumped. She'd never addressed him like that before. "What is the REST of that sentence?"

She was glaring, but he was too, if not at her. " 'Made plausible threats.' " She bit her lip, processing. "Does Nick KNOW that?"

"No."

"Why NOT?"

"Because then, it would have turned the threats to reality. And now, it would merely sound like an excuse."

"You'll have to tell him."

"Why?"

"That - that question was ALMOST stupid enough to make me want to leave you here for three and a half hours to catch the bus again." They were indeed back next to the bus shelter, and had been for some minutes. "But lucky for you, I saw that video, and Nick looked happy in it. And your reason for disappearing was better than mine. So you get to come in."

"Thank you."

"I THINK lucky for you, anyway."

"What does that mean?"

"Larry challenged you too, didn't he? Three things to improve your life?"

"...yes." She was holding the front gate of the manor open, and she gestured him inside with a sideways nod. He followed, not entirely knowing why, and she shut the gate forcefully behind them.

"You're going to talk to your dad."

He felt himself go pale.

"Too much of a shock? Or is it just the heat? Look, frills, you don't get to just say anymore that you don't believe in channeling. You've known about us for too long. And you need to. It's okay; we'll take the long way around the grounds. You can have a little time to get used to the idea."

He stumbled after her. "Miss Fey..."

"MASTER, if we're back to that."

"Maya." He felt himself fraying at the edges, losing the framework of formality and faced with - well, it didn't seem just to call it a crisis. An event. An opportunity. A judgment.

"Just follow me. Don't ask me anything about it, or argue, for a few minutes." He followed, glancing from the back of her head to the surroundings. They passed two posts with wires running between them. Strips of faded blue cloth, barely blue anymore, were tied around the lines.

"What are those?"

"What are which?"

"The blue strips."

"Oh." She paused a step to let him catch up, and she was frowning. "Channeling isn't the only service we perform for the spirits. Those are wards."

"Wards?"

"Of protection for the vulnerable dead. We put those up for children. For those who were not in their right mind when they died. For suicides." She looked at him flatly. "We nearly put them up for you."

He stopped in his tracks. The words came out slowly. "I'm..._terribly_...sorry..." Her look was one of simple acknowledgement.

"Nick had me channel you, after you disappeared that spring. Obviously, it didn't work, and we knew...it must have hurt, though." And he remembered an afternoon when he'd been sitting by himself in a Vancouver hotel room, gazing out the window at False Creek, and falling out of his chair in abrupt agony and wondering whether he was having a heart attack, and whether he possibly deserved one.

"Yes. It did." She nodded, and started walking again, towards the manor itself. His glance flicked back and forth across the yard, across the sky. He didn't have a reason to tell her to stop, but he wished he did. Some sensible, sane, reasonable reason to get back on the bus and go back to Los Angeles. He followed her inside.

* * *

_What would you say to your father now, if you had the chance?_

* * *

Someone had clearly prepared the room and just left. It was full of glowing candles, and a tray containing a teapot and two rough cups with no handles sat in the middle of the floor. A thin trail of steam rose from the spout. Something black lay folded on the mats on the far side of the tray.

The door closed behind them, and he heard it lock. The same helpful someone, no doubt. He stayed where he stood while Maya crossed the room and unfolded the black thing. Again, a straightforward question he could ask. "What is that?"

"This robe? A courtesy. Channelers calling male spirits usually wear these. Not really necessary, I guess, but some people aren't comfortable with pink."

"Did you put one on for me?" It's a nervy, pointless question that he would never have asked if he'd been calm.

"Yes. No point, though." An answer with multiple meanings. And she bent her head and began to chant, and he looked ever more frantically around the room. Flickering candles. Locked door. Empty cups. Dark ceiling. The air _pressed _on him, and he looked back to Maya, who'd stopped speaking, and for the first time since the courthouse elevator had gone dark, he saw his father's face.

It was still filtered through Maya's, but the cheekbones and jawline were so _similar_ to what he saw in his own mirror - and childhood memories he hadn't even known he had stored away were clamoring from all sides that yes, this was - _Dad_- a word he barely used as an adult - and he wanted to hide.

The room was sparsely furnished. There was nothing to hide behind. But a split-second look at Gregory's face had been enough to fill him with shame, because he wasn't a nine-year-old boy any longer, he wasn't the person who Gregory had loved...

...and his dad said, "Miles?" Just exactly as he used to, and he didn't know how but he went _around_ the tea tray instead of _through _it and knelt down and leaned against his father's side and wept. And almost instantly, an arm in a black sleeve wrapped around his shoulders.

* * *

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, but when he raised his head, the candles seemed to have burnt lower. He fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped at his face with it. When he spoke, it seemed inappropriately loud. "I'm sorry."

That thoughtful voice. "What _for_?"

"For..." Shooting your rival in the shoulder. Growing up. Not coming to see you sooner. "For the…Byzantine mess I make of life...I remember planning on following in your footsteps. Defending the innocent. It was so straightforward...and now _nothing _is straightforward."

"Nothing ever _was_."

"What?"

"To a nine-year-old...it may have looked that way. But the complications were always there. For an honest person, they're unavoidable. Miles, _I'm _sorry. For leaving you. For not doing a better job of protecting you. Your life was tangled up at an early age. But you've done a remarkable job of setting it straight. When I can see you…the only thing that I don't like to see is how long you seem to be willing to wait to be happy."

"What do you mean?" His voice sounded rough from the earlier tears. They still were kneeling side by side, looking towards the door. The tea had been forgotten.

"Miles...you never stopped caring for Nicky, did you?" It was strange to hear that childhood, well, nickname, and to remember that that was what Gregory had always called him.

"No."

"But you won't say so?"

"It's too late."

"Miles, I'm dead. I died not much older than you are right now. And I have to say that being dead provides a superior understanding of the phrase 'too late.' If you're alive, and he's alive...it's not."

To his own surprise, he laughed a little. "What if he disagrees?"

"You're a famous lawyer and you ask me that? Convince him, for crying out loud."

He laughed again. "Thanks..."

"Look, don't press me on the details. I didn't date much."

And it occurs to him to ask what might be a silly question. "Dad?"

"What is it?"

"Do you mind the way I dress? I mean, it's a far cry from a fedora."

"The pink? The cravat? Oh, no. The camp version of von Karma provided one of the biggest laughs of my afterlife. He must have hated your color scheme."

"Dad? You really ought to meet my little sister."

* * *

June 17, 5:48pm

It had been absolutely, utterly, unquestionably, the worst thing he could have said.

Phoenix had come to regard teasing Polly as something of a workplace perk. Big voice, silly hair antennae, meticulous work habits: all were fair game when he was in the mood to make a nuisance of himself. Besides, it wasn't like any of them would provide grounds for an actual argument.

Polly's love life, on the other hand, would. And no matter how _aware _he was that he shouldn't tweak his apprentice simply for being a luckier man than he'd ever been, the coils of envy that squirmed around in his gut only got worse the more he tried to refrain from bringing it up.

So he had started off by asking vague occasional questions, like "How is Prosecutor Gavin?"

Except that the answers to that were either "He's fine," or once or twice, "I don't know, I didn't see him yesterday," and that was uninteresting, no matter how much Polly blushed.

So he tried being solicitous. "Do you want to get an extra key made?" Or solicitous in an annoying way. "Polly, I'm going to the German deli. Would your arm candy appreciate having any of the food of his people in the refrigerator?"

The latter had brought about some quite satisfactory grumbling, but the former elicited the information that the extra key had already been made, which not only irritated him but deprived him of the chance to scold Apollo about this being a law office and that being a security risk.

Even if he didn't REALLY think Klavier was a burglar.

So, one afternoon, he moved from solicitous to insinuating.

"Apollo?"

"Hm?" The shorter man was reading a file and bouncing a pencil off the edge of it and not even looking up.

"Have you two had any kind of trouble with the Prosecutor's Office?"

"Me and the client? Well, YEAH - they're TRYING him..."

"Not you and whoever that is you're tapping with a pencil, Polly. You and KLAVIER."

Apollo thought for a second. "Well...no."

"No?"

"No. Why?"

"I wonder how they'd feel about their literal golden boy being involved with a defense attorney who beats them so often? They haven't said anything about a conflict of interest or a publicity problem?"

"Well...no."

"Or collusion?"

"No." Apollo did look up at that. "Klavier, um, talked to the Chief Prosecutor right away, once, um, well. But that went fine. They said they might have to be a little careful with how the cases are assigned, but it's not a big deal. He's got a picture on his desk, too."

That last detail didn't seem strictly relevant, and it aggravated Phoenix. They seemed to be having it entirely too easy.

"So what are these careful case assignments? He hasn't missed out on anything big, has he?" That sounded like a short joke. Or worse. Oh well.

Apollo either deliberately ignored the choice of words or didn't notice anything wrong with it. "Nope. If anything, he's getting a better caseload out of it. Better for a prosecutor, anyway. Guiltier people."

"So things are really okay?"

"Yes. They are."

It was the worst thing he could have said.

The idea that Phoenix had missed by an inch what he thought he'd missed by a mile had been hard enough. Now it was as though Apollo was saying, no, not a whole inch - just a centimeter. It was too much. So Phoenix kept talking.

"So do you have plans for if this thing you have doesn't work out?" Apollo had looked back to his papers, and now he sat very still.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"You know what they say. About relationships forged in stressful situations. They're fragile. And I imagine Kristoph was stressful..."

Apollo turned red and got up slowly, and the smarter half of Phoenix's brain got the thought through that he might be on the verge of being punched again, but was drowned out again a moment later.

"Sir. KNOCK it OFF!" The kid was _loud_.

_Iambic_, said his inner Dr. Seuss, helpfully, before pointing out that there was a noise downstairs.

"I may not know whether you think you're helping or teasing, but I've had ENOUGH of it! "

"Don't take that tone of voice with me-"

"If you were making sense or being a decent boss, I WOULDN'T!"

Somewhere below, a voice said something he only parsed several minutes later as "Don't worry, fräulein, I'll make believe I don't hear a thing."

"You're ENVIOUS! But I'm not about to talk down something good for your sake!"

"You may not properly appreciate-"

"I don't appreciate all of this overly PERSONAL nagging, or all of this, this self-satisfied PESSIMISM! It doesn't make for a good work environment!"

Somewhere behind him the door opened, but he turned without paying a lot of attention, because he was annoyed with Polly shouting at him, he really was.

"What's the problem? I thought maybe you kind of MISSED having a poisonous mentor!"

As he was completing the turn and the sentence, he saw Klavier Gavin in the doorway. And as he said the word "poisonous," rather loudly, the rock star's eyes and mouth widened in surprise, and one of his long legs took a big step backwards.

The argument may have been loud, but the sound of someone falling down the stairs seemed much louder in comparison.

It was the worst thing he could have said.

Apollo stared at the suddenly empty doorway in shock, then bellowed, "WHAT DID YOU DO?" and shoved past. Phoenix followed, blinking stupidly.

Trucy had saved the day. She was cowering down by the front door, but she had one arm extended, and some kind of wand in one hand, and Klavier looked like he'd been attacked by some kind of flamboyant carnival spider. The wand had exploded with colorful streamers, and they held him up by his arms and shoulders, kind of sitting up against the wall about three-quarters of the way down. He was gingerly touching one knee and hissing in between pained German-sounding diphthongs, but at least he hadn't hit his head.

Apollo tossed a furious glance up the stairs and said, "I'll bring the car around."

Trucy spoke up then. "I'll come with you."

Klavier's tone of voice was outright pleasant, given the circumstances. "Are you sure, fräulein? This will probably be boring."

"I'm sure." She didn't even come upstairs to drop off her bags. Apollo reappeared and propped the front door open and the three of them sort of limped out.

The idea of the flashy blond trying to lean on people much shorter than he was in order to walk might have been amusing a few minutes ago. Likewise, Phoenix thought about calling, "Don't forget Vera," as Trucy shut the downstairs door, but the fun had gone out of it.

But he'd make great strides studying for the bar with all of this peace and quiet. Right.

He assessed his own behavior, didn't like it at all, and tried to fit the assessment somewhere small and convenient for later. He needed to get some work done. Right.

He looked up from his books that evening only when Trucy sent a series of text messages to his cell phone:

- It's not dislocated.

- Almost, though. Ligament something. Nice job.

- We're getting Vera and food and taking him back to his place.

- I love you, Daddy, but you're a coward.


	7. Consultation

Author's Note:

I'm sorry for the delay in posting the new chapter; I was out of town there for most of a week. LittleDuck, I had this nearly finished already, but what you ask for is coming. : )

* * *

June 17, 10:46pm

He studied late that night. In perfect peace and quiet.

He kind of hated it.

"Want a cup of coffee, Charley?"

The plant ignored him.

After several hours, as he was resting his head on his arms and his eyes were closing, he realized that he was nose-to-so-to-speak-nose with his cell phone. Trucy's texts had been the only contact anyone had tried to make.

_I love you, Daddy, but you're a coward._

He fell asleep hoping for a pleasant dream, at least, but his subconscious rewarded him with a vision of Miles as he'd looked a decade years ago, walking by underneath the office window. He tried to call down, but he couldn't make himself heard. So he tried to run down the stairs and catch up, but the hall was blocked by a gigantic, sticky spiderweb in all colors of the rainbow.

* * *

June 18, 10:10am

He woke late the next morning, and was disappointed, despite everything, to realize that Apollo wasn't around. It was much, much too quiet.

He remembered then that Polly was supposed to be investigating something or other out on the Palos Verdes peninsula. And that Trucy had still been carrying her book bag when she had huffed out yesterday, so Polly had probably taken her to school.

He was going to be alone for the rest of the day, wasn't he. He'd just got through heaving a terrific sigh when the telephone rang. He banged his funny bone getting to it.

"Hello?"

Edgeworth's voice. "You knocked Klavier Gavin down the stairs?"

"I did not!"

"Oh?"

"I...just said something kind of terrible and startled him into falling down them on his own."

_I've just fallen for the oldest lawyer trick in the book, haven't I. Damn lawyer. Why is everyone I know a damn lawyer?_

"Edgeworth, you know I wouldn't have shoved him. You knew I didn't."

"But I **don't **know what possessed you to take a bad mood out on the people you refer to as, ahem, the Flopsy Bunnies."

"Well, what did HE tell you?"

"When he limped through my door earlier this morning and I very naturally asked? Only that you'd been shouting at Apollo about something personal."

He felt childish and sulky. "Well, it is."

"Wright, verbal altercations shouldn't send people to seek medical attention. And I'd ask what Apollo did to upset you, but I have the distinct feeling that he didn't have to do much." A pause. "Is there something going on that you need to discuss?"

_Ask me that eight years ago._ He glared ferociously hard at his desk. He was **behaving **like Edgeworth, eight years ago. "I'm studying."

"Then I suppose I should leave you to it."

"I suppose you should." He hung up. _Come back.  
_

* * *

June 18, 5:08pm

That afternoon, Edgeworth found himself visiting the police. One of the files he'd been given to review (this one involving an extradition request) was missing every other page, and he didn't really think much of his chances of getting it straightened out over the phone.

One of the secretaries could have handled it, to be certain, but his odd conversation with Wright had also left him feeling restless. The man had seemed to be enjoying himself the last time they'd seen each other, but even though Phoenix was capable of some epic mood swings, and even though studying for the bar was far from relaxing, this was strange. It wasn't like him to lash out at people unprovoked, and he hadn't gotten the impression from Klavier that Apollo had been provoking him.

Maybe Klavier was just biased.

Getting his file in order took longer than he felt it should have, but at least a rather intimidated someone understood the printer better when he left. He felt the need for some fresh air, and exited the building through a side door.

Two individuals he hadn't expected to see were sitting on the battered round bench-and-tables where the detectives who smoked took their cigarette breaks.

* * *

_Do other people trust you more than you trust yourself?_

* * *

"Mr. Edgeworth! Sir!" One of them was - Maggey Byrde? "Can I talk to you?" She'd jumped up when she'd seen him, lost one of her flat shoes in the process, and scuffled it out from under the table with her stocking foot, all without unclenching her fists (held against her sides) or taking her eyes off of him. "Please?"

"I suppose so...?"

She glared at the ground for a moment and then looked back up. "I was waiting for Richard...Detective Gumshoe."

"Ah. That sounds...nice?"

"I'm trying to surprise him."

He just waited for her to keep going. He didn't have to wait long.

"Sir, this might just sound pathetic, but I don't know if he's got somebody else!"

GUMSHOE? Frankly, the thought of him with ONE person had been a little surprising.

"Ms. Byrde, I have to say...that as much as I've faulted him over the years, I've never had the slightest cause to question his loyalty."

She rubbed her nose and sniffed. "I've heard him on the phone with her."

"With **who**?"

"With a young woman. Younger."

Edgeworth was very definitely surprised, but he tried to keep it out of his face and his voice. "What were they saying?"

"It's kind of cryptic. Like they don't want to SAY what they're talking about to talk about it. I've heard them maybe three or four times this year? But Richard...Richard's ALWAYS gotten calls like that. I figured they were just because of work, but maybe..."

"Ah...you do know that Detective Gumshoe is working on...something...with my sister at the moment? Could you possibly have been hearing-"

"I know. And I know what your sister sounds like. It's not Franziska. This one GIGGLES."

He supposed not.

"It may have been my sister's, ah-" He didn't really have a word for Adrian. Franziska insisted that "girlfriend" sounded frivolous, and "partner" was not only rather clinical but misleading in a legal setting.

"Your sister's ah is older. I don't think it was Adrian."

"I...I'm afraid I don't know who it might be, then, but I really cannot imagine that he's..."

She looked at him over her glasses, hurt and petulant. "I know. Neither could I. But...I'm the luckiest girl in the world." He couldn't respond to that. "Would YOU talk to him?"

"Me?"

"He respects you. And it makes him nervous when you get angry at him. Or at least it used to."

"Well...I won't YELL at him. But, if you'd like, I will try to talk to him."

She took a step closer. "Please?"

"All right."

Sniff. "Thank you. I think I need something to drink. Not like that. Soda. You know." She marched off around the corner of the building, presumably heading for the Famima! convenience store and anonymity.

The other person sitting and waiting was Spencer Langley. In a button-up shirt.

"Mr. Edgeworth?"

He quirked an eyebrow. "Your Honor."

"Ohgoodatleastyourecognizedme . Phew. Now for the embarrassing part."

He could have been more tactful in reply, but he said, "You're infatuated with Detective Skye, and you're wondering if I'll let you in to see her."

Spencer turned red. "It was that obvious?"

"Yes. But no, I won't let you in."

"What? I'm a law-abiding citizen!"

"And this is a law enforcement facility. They discourage unauthorized visits."

"Do I have to get ARRESTED?"

"You certainly have the option...but you might be happier staying right where you are for just a bit longer. You see, this is the door nearest the vending machines."

"So I can fantasize about their comforting neon glow? You're a cold man, Mr. Edgeworth."

"Ema Skye is an acerbic woman, Mr. Langley. But she has a soft spot for these crunchy chocolate things that are sold in vending machines. Hence, this particular door is her exit of choice."

"So she'll come out this way?"

"She almost always does."

"In that case, sir, I beg of you, do something devious for me." Spencer opened a very battered wallet and extracted some crumpled dollar bills. "Go buy the chocolate things? All of them. Clean out the machine."

Edgeworth raised both eyebrows.

"This is the inspiration of love. And I'm not enough of a jerk to kidnap her dog. I'm pleading."

The look he gave Spencer wasn't really directed at Spencer. It was aimed at the cosmos in its entirety. Why was he, of all people, the world's relationship assistant today? But fine.

He took the bills back inside, got the machine to give up the last three Snackoos bags (it wouldn't **dare**get persnickety about the crumpled bills, not with the look he gave it) and went back outside to deliver them to Spencer with the change.

"Mr. Langley?" He might as well be serious, if he was doing this at all.

"Yes?"

"Ema isn't a happy human being. You might be in for something of a surprise."

"She's bitter? I'm a graduate student. Don't even worry." The kid made a funny little goodbye salute, said, "Aim for the apex!" to no one in particular, and turned to face the door.

Edgeworth left him to his fate.

* * *

June 18, 5:08pm

That afternoon, Trucy came home. "Hi, Daddy."

"Hi, sweetheart. How did you get here? Is Polly parking the car?"

"No. Bus. Polly's at Klavier's." Her tone was short, and that was all she said before heading into the kitchen and rummaging through the refrigerator. He was used to her being generically talkative, and the silence made him squirm internally. Somehow she made the act of getting herself a grapefruit drink reproachful.

He wasn't feeling THAT contrite yet. "So when will the prosecutor be calling to thank me?"

She turned around in shock, holding the green Toronja bottle in midair. "THANK you?"

"For driving his concerned boyfriend into his arms. And his apartment."

Her eyes flashed, and for a second he thought that she was REALLY going to let him have it, but she visibly collected herself and said, "Cowboy up. If I had to get over my crush on Klavier, then so do you."

He sputtered. "I do NOT - I have NEVER -that - he's PURPLE!" He saw that she was laughing her head off at him now, rather vindictively, but the outburst insisted on running its course. "And he's too young for me."

"Oh, dad, admit your feelings. You're both adults, and in that situation ten years is nothing."

"He could be my exact age and he'd STILL be too young for me! He's - a big kid!"

"You're one to talk. At least Klavier owns dress shoes."

"Trucy, that's enough. I do not have a crush on Apollo's boyfriend."

"No, you have a crush on Mr. Edgeworth. And instead of admitting it, you take it _out_on Apollo and Apollo's boyfriend."

He stared at her, absolutely furious. Much angrier than he'd been at Apollo yesterday. He wrenched his voice into low control and said, "I don't believe I've ever discussed him with you."

"Not really."

"Then where, pray tell, did you get that idea?"

"Don't be dumb, Daddy. I was at the mock trial thing WITH you. You looked JUST like Polly did, gazing all moonstruck across the room at the prosecutors' table. And he's the most POISED person I think I've ever seen."

His heart hammered. "Can't you tell the difference between hormones and rivalry?"

"YUP. I CAN. And I have VIDEO. We can watch RIGHT NOW."

"No, thank you."

"Why not? Half the internet has seen it already."

"I know what my own face looks like."

"Daddy!" She sounded like she was pleading. "It's not just you! He was looking at you BACK the same way!"

The silence couldn't have lasted for more time than it took him to breathe twice, but it felt much, much longer.

Giving up had been torture. And he'd had a reason for it. This wouldn't be the time to forget that and let his defenses crumple.

"Trucy, I used to think he walked on water, all right? That he was better than human. That he and I had some kind of...I don't know. Trust. Unspoken bond. Something stupid like that. There were suspicions about his conduct early in his career. He got accused of **murder**. I...I hung on and believed, despite everything. And when I lost my badge? He brushed me off. Just disappeared and never even tried to talk to me again. I don't feel like wasting another minute on feeling anything about him, okay?" Her eyes were big and surprised and sad, and he was pretty sure he'd made his point, but inside he wasn't nearly so clear on it all. He _meant_it, he did, but at the same time it was as though he was crossing a line he didn't want to cross, and he felt so terribly guilty, like he was being somehow disloyal. Though how that was possible after what Miles had done - or not done...

He swallowed hard and went and shut himself in the bathroom and sat on the floor, under the towel rack.

_I'm pathetic._

About five minutes later, Trucy rapped her knuckles lightly on the door. "Dad?"

"...Yeah? Um. Yes?"

"Polly will be back tomorrow. He says he knows it was an accident. But no more driving lessons."

* * *

June 22, 8:02am

It took a few days for Edgeworth to talk to Detective Gumshoe. To be honest, he hadn't been trying terribly hard to make the conversation happen any sooner, though. Maggey had been genuinely concerned, that much was apparent, but the idea of it seemed so UNLIKELY, and the discussion so sure to be uncomfortable...at any rate, he permitted some time to pass.

One morning, though, he heard sniffling and gasping noises coming from the bullpen as he emerged from the stairwell, and shortly thereafter saw the head secretary sitting with one of her subordinates at an unused corner desk. The younger woman was clutching a box of tissues while the older one patted her arm.

"I was so S-S-STUPID! I thought he was the kind of guy who'd N-NEVER...but I guess there ARE no kinds of guy for that..."

The head secretary gave him a you-understand-don't-you? look over the girl's shoulder and chivvied her out of her seat and towards the elevator.

This young woman, with her long red fingernails and immaculate outfit, looked nothing like Maggey Byrde. But it was enough to send him into Franziska's office again.

The first thing she said was, "I do **not **look tired." It was at least somewhat true. Her eyes didn't look so heavy, though they were still shadowed, and her mouth was less pinched, though her face was still pale.

"If you say so."

"I say so." He hesitated. "Little brother, are you looming over my work for a reason?"

"I presume you are still working with Detective Gumshoe?" She looked up at him, but didn't reply. "The next time he stops by, would you refer him to my office?"

"Were you thinking to interrogate him?"

"Not about anything regarding your official duties." Her lips may have pinched together a bit, but she maintained a steady gaze. "I ran into Maggey Byrde a few days ago. She thinks...she thinks he might be involved with someone else."

"Laughable."

"I would tend to agree. But she has apparently heard him on the phone with a giggling young woman several times now. Which makes me reasonably certain that she did not mean you."

"Certainly not." Was that a flash of recognition in her eyes? "I maintain that Ms. Byrde is being foolish. But I will certainly send the detective to see you, if you wish."

"Thank you." He started to leave, and paused. "Franziska, how should I be referring to Adrian?"

"Respectfully."

"...of course. But what should I say? She is my sister's...what?"

Franziska bent her head down over her papers. "She is one of my redemptions."

* * *

June 23, 11:24am

Detective Gumshoe appeared in his doorway the next day. His wasn't a face that had changed very much, despite the passage of time - he hadn't looked young when he was young, Edgeworth reflected, and probably wouldn't look old when he was old. His was an indestructible and affable shabbiness.

"Sir? I've just been to see your sister, and she said that you wanted to talk to me?"

He sighed. "Yes, Detective. I hope this won't take long. Would you like to have a seat?"

"Oh, you never used to ask me to sit down, sir! It would almost be weird, to start now!"

Edgeworth thought about standing up himself, then, but he was having enough trouble trying to decide what to do with his hands. Standing up would introduce the additional problem of feet. He stayed put.

"Detective, I spoke to Maggey Byrde recently." The big man smiled at the mention of her name. "I ran into her inadvertently, when she was waiting for you."

The detective smiled again. "Yeah...she does that sometimes."

"She was distressed. She has the impression that you might be seeing someone else."

"WHAT? NO! NEVER! Not EVER, Sir, I WOULDN'T! You should know, I mean, she should know, I, but, NO!" Gumshoe did collapse into the proffered chair then, which thankfully was sturdy enough to support his oversized frame crashing into it.

"She reported overhearing a few partial telephone conversations between you and an unfamiliar young woman."

Gumshoe's eyes widened. "But I never carried on with..." A light seemed to go on. "OH! Oh, sir, she must have heard me talking to-" He actually clamped one hand over his own mouth at that point. "I - I'm sorry, sir. I can't say. Yet. But I'll explain to Maggey, I promise I will. I'd never cheat on her, sir, I'm going to propose to her after all this is over and done with!"

"After **what **is over?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't say that either."

* * *

June 23, 11:24am

Apollo had been **scrupulous **since his return to the agency. Files were filed. Clients were met with. Investigations were made. His workspace was tidied within a millimeter of its life. But he wasn't talking much. And when the office closed for the day, he'd disappear, sometimes with Trucy, more usually not.

"Daddy, if you won't apologize, I'll tell him why."

"He pretty much knows why."

"But does he know WHO why? 'Cause if he doesn't, I'll tell him. And then he'll know who why and Klavier will know who why and Klavier KNOWS him."

"Trucy, your English teacher would have a heart attack."

"I get good grades in English. And you're trying to distract me."

"Apparently not hard enough." She rolled her eyes under the brim of the hat.

"Okay, okay."

* * *

June 24, 3:32pm

He tried the next day.

"Apollo, I'm sorry."

His apprentice (though the phrase was starting to feel like a joke) stopped what he was doing and looked at him. No, **looked **at him. "What for?"

_You're not going to make this easy, are you._

"For, well, verbally tossing your...um, songbird, down the stairs."

"Say it. Boyfriend."

"Boyfriend."

"Okay. What else?"

"...for shouting at you like that."

"Good. Next."

"...and for picking on you the way I was doing. You were right. It was envy, and I wasn't being fair. The situation has nothing to do with you."

"That's not really true anymore. And anyway. Does your apologizing have anything to do with needing more time in a car with a licensed driver?"

"Certainly not!" The indignance was genuine.

"Just checking. And apology accepted. But I'm still not going to drive around with you any more. In case you were wondering. Klavier isn't exactly cleared to ride his dumb motorcycle yet, and I'm playing chauffeur with Sandra to keep him from getting any ideas."

"Fair enough...but Polly...WHO is SANDRA?"

Apollo was facing the shelves, but the back of his neck turned red. "Sandra's my car."

Phoenix chuckled for a good three minutes.

* * *

June 24, 3:32pm

Ema Skye barged into Edgeworth's office like she owned it, lab coat flapping. "Prosecutor Edgeworth, I have a request."

He'd been in the middle of something rather complicated, and his train of thought was completely lost. He blinked at her, and that was all the encouragement she needed. "The next time you think about sending a young man who needs a haircut and thinks he's **just so clever **into my office, or bringing him to see me, or leaving him for me to **trip **over?"

He wasn't sure whether it was Klavier or Spencer who'd gotten to her this time. Maybe he did owe her an apology.

"...go ahead and do it."

_Hrm?_

"Which is not to say that they're not irritating. But." She took a deep breath and kind of flapped her arms in a nervous gesture. "I'm retaking the Forensics exam."

_Three cheers! However..._"I didn't think that was offered more than once yearly? And the seats are allotted to recent graduates?"

"The **fop **pled my case to the department. Using the gadgety parts of that damn mock trial video."

The mock trial had actually ended in a very real conviction for embezzlement.

"And he walked in and expected you to be grateful?"

"Even worse. It was supposedly an anonymous recommendation from the Prosecutor's Office, but I got a copy of the letter yesterday, and it was handwritten with SMILEY FACES over the i's. Mr. Edgeworth, you're basically the only other prosecutor who knows who I am, and you probably didn't even do that in kindergarten."

* * *

_Did you always act older than your age, as a child?_

* * *

"A fair deduction."

"Besides, when I came up here, he saw me through his doorway and looked like he was seeing Captain Hook and slammed the door in my face and locked it. So I used my lockpicker." She paused. "Oh, yeah. Maybe I never showed you the lockpicker." She fished in her pocket and came out with something like a large ballpoint pen.

"That looks suspiciously like a prop from _Doctor Who_."

She muttered something about science fiction historically being a fine source of ideas for inventors, then continued her story. "So when I came through the door he panicked again and tried to hide under his DESK. Except his knee's a mess, and he couldn't get back OUT. So I had to get Detective Gumshoe to move the desk and pick him up. He's GOOFY, now he's finally got a boyfriend."

She took a deep breath and scowled at the floor. "But when I first saw that offer, and the letter, I was going to refuse. It was humiliating." Edgeworth kept his face politely neutral, but inside he groaned. "What right did he have to interfere with my life and make me look silly, anyway? Not everybody thinks that's funny. But then you left me Spencer. And I know it was you, because my vending machine camera saw you buying all the Snackoos."

_Of course she has a vending machine camera._"But what does Spencer Langley have to do with this?"

"Well, he ambushed me. And when he handed me the Snackoos, I threw them at him."

"That doesn't sound like an auspicious beginning."

"Yeah. He asked me what I did that for. And I told him all about Gavin. And he said that was awesome, that I should take the opportunity, and I should have seen how badly he failed the GRE the first time because he stayed up all night trying to beat his roommates at _Mario Kart_.

"I don't know how he knew, but I appreciate it anyway. So, um, since I kind of ought to thank you...thank you. And here."

"What's this?" It was a topographical map of the greater Los Angeles area, in fact, with markings on it, but it was far from clear what it was for.

"I think you can see that from your apartment. I asked the head secretary where you lived."

"But what is this?"

"Nine pm. Fireworks. I work on them with some Caltech people. We just finalized the location."

"Just now? Aren't you cutting it fine?"

"Well, Professor Lee applied for three different permits and cancelled the other ones. It's kind of how she does things, especially because she can put Caltech after her name and get away with everything."

"That's good to know..."

"Anyway, go up on your roof. It'll be really good. And, um...maybe you can invite Mr. Wright."

His cravat felt too tight, so he returned to an earlier topic.

"Ema. _Mario Kart_?"

She frowned. "I guess you've never had roommates."

* * *

June 26, 5:16pm

He was straightening his bookshelf. He was opening his blinds. He was putting paper clips on his files. He was brushing dust off of his laptop screen. He was pouring tea. He was drinking tea. He was closing his blinds. He was not calling Phoenix Wright.

* * *

_Do you recognize your own nervous habits?_

* * *

He was being foolish. After all, he was not calling Phoenix Wright. He was playing with his keychain. He was actively engaged in not calling Phoenix Wright.

A happy laugh echoed outside, muffled as though it had come out of someone else's door before coming in through his. That was probably Klavier talking to someone in the Wright offices himself.

He found himself hoping that the younger prosecutor would come in and provide some solid pretext for not picking up the phone. It wasn't that he didn't want to act on his father's advice - it was that he didn't feel equipped to talk Wright into anything. The rapid approach of the Fourth meant that he'd have to call soon, but the calendar had nothing to do with how much Wright probably still resented him. And for a moment his whole torso clenched and he hated Kristoph with a lightless, airless fury he hadn't felt in years.

A halting guitar melody made its way down the row and into the air of his office, and with it came words. He held stock-still, and relaxed, and watched the dust sink golden in the afternoon sunlight from his window, and listened to Kristoph's brother sing.

"I promise I'll return you  
every last hope that you've lost...  
Just wait another hour  
while I get our stars uncrossed...  
while I melt the autumn frost...  
I'll untie the constellations,  
we can rearrange our fate...  
Just lean there in my doorway,  
sweetheart,  
wait..."

The song was very rough, no question, but he quietly closed the door and picked up the telephone.

* * *

June 26, 5:20pm

The phone rang. Phoenix glanced at his books, glanced at the noisy interruption, and weighed his options. Boredom won.

"Hello?"

"Wright?" The familiar voice sounded quiet. He raised his own in response.

"Edgeworth. Got something else to make me feel guilty about?"

"...Not this time. I've been talking to Ema Skye."

"And how is the vending machine vixen?"

"Preparing to retake the Forensics exam, by special permission thanks to the devices she showed off during the spectacle at your alma mater. She'll pass it."

He paused, and reached up to feel for the button on his hat. "That's wonderful. She deserves it. And I'm glad you told me." Why did every sentence out of his mouth sound like a dismissal?

Well, that was a stupid question.

"That's not the only reason I called. Did you know she makes fireworks with a group from Caltech?"

"I didn't...but I totally believe you."

"Their show for the Fourth ought to be visible from the roof of my building. And...well, she'd like you to see it. And so I wondered whether you'd be...whether you'd perhaps enjoy..."

Part of him wanted to keep listening to Edgeworth squirm, while another (very dumb, very immature) part of him wanted to jump at the chance. Neither won.

"Edgeworth, Ema's not the only one with a test to take. On the Fourth...I'll be holed up in a hotel, getting ready to retake the bar. Tell Ema...I'm sorry."

There was a pause on the other end of the line as Edgeworth absorbed this response. "I won't need to tell her that. You should call her with your congratulations anyhow. And I'm sure she'll tell you if you can see it from wherever you're staying."

"Edgeworth?"

"Yes?"

"Don't forget to invite the bunnies. Bunnies LOVE things like fireworks."

"Even Trucy?"

Phoenix surprised himself. "Of course, even Trucy."

* * *

July 4, 8:22pm

This was how he found himself on the roof of his apartment building on the warm night of the Fourth of July, sitting on an old beach towel, with Franziska and Adrian as well as the bunnies, looking out at the orange glow of the urban sky and waiting for the show to start. Another picnic had been assembled, but this one was augmented with a number of odd jams and biscuits from the expensive-gift section of Adrian's department store. Franziska had wanted to bring a bottle of wine or two, too, but he'd put his foot down about potentially underaged drinking in the dark and on the roof.

The food had all been eaten, and once again there was a sense of peace, being with this group. The presence of two additional people had done nothing to damage that. Vera and Adrian, in fact, had instantly gotten along so well that he wanted to make a half-formed joke about multiplying negative numbers. And Franziska, for her part, seemed bemused, and quite content to listen to the two of them chat about art galleries and, at one point at least, frozen waffles.

Klavier, who was exclusively an elevator user for the time being, had found the stairs up to the roof a bit difficult, and had been fussed over by both Apollo and Trucy, but seemed perfectly happy to be stretched out on a rattly folding aluminum chaise lounge. Its nylon fabric had giant hibiscus blossoms printed on it, and it was hideous. (Given the choice of borrowing this one or a plain red one from a neighbor, Edgeworth had come down with an attack of frivolity - something like a mental hiccup - and had picked the floral option.) Apollo had spread out his own beach towel down next to the ugly chair and was leaning against it, idly watching a loose lock of Klavier's hair shift in the warm, moving air.

Edgeworth glanced between the two young attorneys and the trio of women, and was surprised when Trucy came up behind him.

"Paper plate patrol!" She wasn't loud, just cheerful. He handed his empty one over, and she squished it into a grocery bag. Instead of then moving off to the right or the left, though, she stayed where she was and looked back and forth at the rest of her quartet.

When she spoke again, it was in a much lower voice.

"I've never seen Vera talk so much to a stranger."

"Adrian is almost as shy as she is. And my sister is usually the primary conversationalist."

"How funny. And aw, look, cute." Klavier had his right arm draped over Apollo's right shoulder, and the fingers of that hand were entangled with the fingers of the shorter man's left. "It's not like they can do that in front of Daddy."

_They can't?_"Why not?"

"He gets touchy."

"I wouldn't have thought he-"

"He gets **bitter**. Did you - did you really abandon him, when he lost his badge?"

A surge of guilt and regret, reaching straight from that goodbye in Wright's office doorway to now, skipping over all of the years in between in that unfair way that emotion could and logic couldn't. "Yes. I did."

She looked disappointed. "Because he embarrassed you? Or because you just didn't care that much?"

He let the air out of his lungs, inhaled again. "Neither."

"Then why?"

Could he explain this to Wright's daughter? As he had with Maya? The words came out as he thought them. "I probably owe your father an explanation first."

She thought about it. "Okay. But don't wait too long...I told him he should find somebody."

_Goodness, she's blunt._The thought of Wright with someone else, though...it was undeniably painful, and she saw him wince.

"Well, you don't have to PANIC or anything. He won't get his bar results back for a while. And he still can't drive. Especially now that Polly won't let him practice with Sandra anymore. Sandra-is-the-car."

An idea came to him. Probably a very bad idea. "Trucy?"

"Mm?"

"Tell your father I'll give him driving lessons."

Off to the left, Apollo shouted something and pointed then, and six other pairs of eyes looked over to see an explosion of golden sparks over a dark patch of the city, followed by a trail of pale, sizzling blue.

The show had begun.

* * *

July 4, 8:35pm

The alarm on Phoenix's cell phone beeped, and he looked up from his reading, momentarily confused.

_Oh. The Fourth. Ema._ This hadn't really been his idea of a Fourth of July. He ought to be standing in someone's yard somewhere with a beer. But he went over to the window and pulled the heavy drapes back, ditto the white mesh of the privacy curtain, and oriented himself by the cluster of skyscrapers that meant downtown. And just as he was thinking that maybe he wouldn't be able to see anything after all, a burst of red and purple and pink lit up exactly the right spot, and he smiled, and leaned on his elbows to watch.


	8. Car and Driver

July 8, 7:55am

It felt like a good omen when he walked into the huge hall in which the bar was to be administered and saw all of the bright, polished young things from UCLA and so on. They gave him odd looks, sure, and for the most part they didn't seem to recognize him (he'd deigned to wear a button-up shirt and take the hat off for this) but however they might glance or stare, he'd been right about something.

The DMV had been a lot worse.

* * *

July 11, 11:42am

He was perhaps more relieved than the situation called for when he discovered that the agency hadn't burned down while he'd been gone. Trucy must have been watching for him from the bottom of the stairs, because as soon as he got out of the cab, she burst out of the front door yelling "Congratulations!"

"Honey, I might have flunked for all you know."

"You'd BETTER not have. What was it like?"

"Difficult. Long. Nitpicky. Remind me why I'm doing this in California."

"Weather."

"Right. Thank you." He started up the stairs with his suitcase. "How did it go without me here?"

"No problem!" Which probably meant that she'd been up until four every night playing Scrabble and eating pizza and watching anime with Apollo and Klavier and Vera in who knows which apartment (probably Klavier's, he realizes with a flash of guilt, if it has an elevator) and honestly at least **one **of them should have known better. But the building was still standing and she was happy and the bar was OVER and it was fine. "Did you see Ema's fireworks?"

His remembered smile comes back. "I did. They were great. Did you actually go over to Miles' apartment?"

She nodded big. "And we all love his sister's girlfriend. Especially Vera. They chatted all night."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"That's...that's great." He had to stop mid-sentence to yawn, and he caught himself reusing the word "great." Middle of the day or not, he was exhausted. "Sorry, honey. I need to get some sleep, I think." She'd shut the apartment door behind them.

"That's fine. I'll be quiet. And Polly's-"

He said it with her. "-at Klavier's."

"Well, fine, I still know something you don't know."

"Do you."

"Yup. Mr. Edgeworth's going to give you driving lessons."

"WHAT?"

* * *

July 11, 6:07pm

It had been harder to drop off to sleep after THAT. He did manage to get a few badly-needed hours, though, and so he was feeling marginally more prepared to deal with the concept when he staggered into the kitchen. Trucy was already making dinner, a curry casserole she'd found the recipe for somewhere and which actually tasted quite good once you got over the idea.

"Just a few more minutes! You can go sit down!"

"I'll stand. I've been doing a lot of sitting lately. And I'd love to hear more about this batty driving lessons plot you sprang on me."

She beamed and played with her blue oven mitts. "It's not a plot. It's very simple. You still need to get your driver's license before Thanksgiving, and since Polly's not helping you anymore, you need someone else to drive with. And Mr. Edgeworth volunteered when we were there for the Fourth."

"Oh, really. And there wasn't a certain prestidigitatious teenage lobbyist wheedling at him to do it?"

"No. And hmph. It was totally his own idea and you'd better go."

"You're doing an awful lot of telling me what I had better do and not do."

"Somebody has to."

The casserole drew her attention then, and he did go to sit down, snagging a few Jarritos bottles from the fridge and the bottle opener from a drawer on the way.

He wouldn't feel right calling Edgeworth to say no. But he didn't feel very good about calling him to say yes, either. "Trucy?"

"Yes, Daddy?" She appeared with the casserole dish. "You forgot plates and forks. Get them."

He complied. "You really didn't push him into this?"

"Really."

"And you know that his car is probably worth more than this entire building?"

"Oh, cool. You'll just have to be a good driver, then. Bon appétit."

* * *

July 12, 9:31am

Although he'd gone to bed with every intention of calling the prosecutor the next day, he woke up in something of a panic. This was a terrible idea. Who else did he know who he could ask?

Larry? Far away. Somewhere hilly.

Maya? Somewhere even hillier. And not accustomed to driving much.

The bunnies numbered two non-drivers, one on the injured list, and one who'd already dumped him.

Ema? His ego would never recover from the sorts of things she was sure to say.

Franziska?

Good God.

He called Gumshoe.

" 'Lo?"

"Detective, this is Phoenix Wright-"

"Where've you been KEEPING yourself, pal?"

"Er - in my office mostly. Look, I, er, was wondering if I could ask you a huge favor."

Gumshoe was surprisingly willing and announced that he'd be by that afternoon. No, he didn't need to be at work then, he'd come in early and he'd just wrapped up a case. No, this was going to be kinda fun, pal.

* * *

July 12, 4:18pm

"But - this is a squad car!"

"Yup! It seemed like the best idea, pal. This way if you go too fast or go the wrong way down a one-way street, I can just turn the lights on for you and no one will be able to say anything!"

He stared at the black and white in horror. He couldn't, for the moment, remember exactly how many different kinds of illegal this was, and that was making him retroactively nervous about his performance on the bar, and oh for...

He realized that the big man was slapping his knee and laughing, quietly but so hard that tears were starting to gather in the corners of his eyes.

"Oh, pal, you should have seen your face!"

"Gumshoe - this was a JOKE?"

"Yup! Meekins, you can come on out."

The skinny man appeared from around the corner of the parking lot, chuckling. "Hi, Mr. Wright."

Phoenix nodded at him, defeated. "Detective, this is a side of you I hadn't known about."

"Guess not, pal. My car is the big brown one."

Gumshoe's old sedan had the potential to be a very cool car, but its state of repair was enough to prevent it from being cool to anyone except people who liked FIXING cars. And its paint job probably was enough to drive most of THEM away. It was the automotive equivalent of his trench coat - the old one.

They went for a few blocks making nothing but functional remarks - like _how do you open the vent_ and _turn left at the light_- before Gumshoe started an actual conversation.

"So how did the bar go, pal?"

"Oof. I won't know for a while. It was tough...but I was a question on it."

"Ha! Seriously?"

* * *

_Provide a summary of the events leading to the disbarment of defense attorney Phoenix Wright and the subsequent reintroduction of trial by jury in the state of California._

He hadn't been the first person in the cavernous room to get to that page. What drew his attention was the giggling. The atmosphere for the past several hours had been distinctly humorless, so when the first laughs broke through the ignorable waves of typing and scribbling, he looked up. One of the proctors had made a beeline to the offending test-taker, who just pointed to something on the screen. If there were words exchanged, Phoenix couldn't hear them, but the proctor's body language could be read as _Very well then, now get back to business_.

The next snicker came about five minutes later, from two different directions. The proctors stopped by to see them too, but it was too late. After a certain critical mass was reached, people started to skip ahead to see just what was so funny. People including Phoenix.

Apparently he was more recognizable than he'd thought.

* * *

"Seriously."

The sedan bounced over the painted lines of a crosswalk. However the car had originally been constructed, it now had a hypersensitive suspension that might have been the envy of many a sports car. Many a younger, faster, and more generally operational sports car. But it wouldn't do to criticize Gumshoe's vehicle out loud - after all, he'd been kind enough to show up in the first place.

"We lose a lane in one block, pal. Better change over, unless you want to go around the apartments."

"Okay."

The big detective exhaled loudly, staring ahead at the street. "So why'd you call me?"

"Well, Apollo stopped driving with me after I - uh, maybe you already heard about that?"

"About Prosecutor Gavin and the stairs? Yeah, I heard that. And hard to miss him clumping around the office and sitting with his foot up on a box. What were you and the Justice kid yelling about, anyhow?"

Phoenix abruptly sped up to make it through a yellow light, and hoped that the distraction would serve in place of a response. But it didn't, really.

"Aw, nah, you don't need to tell me. I bet I can guess. Why'd you call me instead of Mr. Edgeworth?"

_Well, that was humiliating._

"You knew about-"

"That he offered to give you driving lessons in his car? Yup. Found out yesterday when I came by to give some stuff to his sister."

"Look, Detective, it's just-"

"It's just sad is what it is, pal, if you don't mind my saying. I mean, he left the States so quick-" _you're goddamn RIGHT he did_- "and his sister put all this work into getting it so he could come back-"

_What._

"Gumshoe, what are you talking about? What did Franziska have to do with it?"

"She was - well, I can't get into the details, but she wanted him to move back here. But there was a lot of stuff to take care of first.

"And I guess it kinda worked out, since the, um, well, they were able to come back before it was all wrapped up. S'why I'm still helping. But still. You could at least appreciate everything some of your old friends have done, pal!"

They were heading down a potholed residential street empty of any other traffic, and Phoenix took the opportunity to pull over to the curb and park.

"Parallel parking doesn't exactly work that way most of the time, you know, right?"

Phoenix glared out through the windshield first, then turned the same look at the car's owner. "Detective. Please. You're not making sense. I don't know what Franziska **or** you had to do with anything, and it took Edgeworth maybe three days to pull his vanishing act, **maybe**, so I have a hard time believing it would take him seven years to turn around and come back!"

"Hey, simmer down. There's only so much I can tell you. It's not my place. But I'm not saying anything I shouldn't if I just tell you that everyone knows you and Mr. Edgeworth were important to each other. Are important to each other, maybe. And everyone wants you to be talking again. So, y'know, if you're short a few hours, I'll be happy to go for a spin in the battleship, here. But I'm not going to give up my time just so you can NOT talk to him - I'm sure not."

Phoenix's voice was almost dangerous. "You don't mean to tell me that people are cooing over us like some kind of cute superannuated Apollo and Klavier?"

The detective frowned rather sadly. "Well, it's more like they would have been a version of you. Except that Mr. Edgeworth sort of took care of Mr. Gavin? So that wouldn't happen?"

And at that moment, Gumshoe's phone rang (the ringtone was cheesy suspicious-things-are-happening music that could have come from any made-for-TV mystery movie from the last fifty years) and he promptly answered it. Deprived of the chance to explode unless he wanted to sound like an ass within earshot of whoever had called, Phoenix did the next best thing and pulled back out into the street, while eavesdropping.

That was a young woman's voice, apparently explaining something at length. She didn't sound unhappy, though.

"Yup...right...right...I gotcha...ha. Smart. Very smart. You're good at this, you know?" The man was clearly doing his best to pay attention to Phoenix's driving and the sounds coming through his phone at the same time, so Phoenix couldn't resist making a few unnecessary turns and **barely **stopping at a few signs.

"K. Hold on a second, will you?" Gumshoe put a massive hand over his phone and said, "Hey, I can still write you a traffic ticket if you keep that up. And they're expensive!"

_Fantastic. Now I have Gumshoe needling me about my income. _He very conscientiously obeyed the traffic laws for the next few blocks.

"Awright. How's the money holding out?...Hmm. I'll ask her. Or you can. Anyway, what time is it where you are?...yeah, you go eat. You earned it. 'Bye." He clicked the phone off and stuck it back in his coat pocket.

"Who was that?"

"You probably don't know her."

"Hence wanting to know who she is."

"Colleague."

"Does Maggey know?"

Gumshoe looked long-suffering. "She sure does now! Look, there's the street that turns into yours past the on-ramp. Let's get you back to your place. You've got to phone Mr. Edgeworth."

That was probably true, damn him.

* * *

July 12, 7:56pm

He stalled through catching up with Apollo and stalled through welcoming Trucy home from school and stalled through dinner and something on the television for twenty minutes before he got his act together and retreated to be alone with his cell phone. He called Edgeworth.

He answered on the second ring. "Good evening?"

"Good evening? Who are you, Dracula?"

"Well, there's no need to tell me who **you **are, Wright. You have a way with a civilized greeting." Both men were silent for several seconds, then Edgeworth began again. "I take it Trucy communicated my offer?"

"She did, though I think you're insane to let me drive a car I'd have to sell my organs on the black market to pay for."

"Don't flatter your organs."

"Hey, I don't drink much at all. The grape juice is not a euphemism."

"I know." Another wordless stretch. "All the same, I was quite serious."

"You usually are. So when can we get started?"

Edgeworth seemed a little surprised by that. "You're taking me up on it?"

"I'd be a fool not to." One last awkward pause. "I bet that car is too much fun to miss."

A little smile came into the voice on the other end of the line. "Quite right."

"I can be outside the front door in three minutes." _God, I sound like Gavin. _And that was an interesting train of thought for a moment - when had he reassigned that name in his mind to default to the good brother?

"Unfortunately, I can't. That flag-of-convenience mess came back with a disgusting vengeance yesterday, and right now I'm doing my best to make life difficult for people on three different continents and an island. But let's agree to meet in a week."

Phoenix couldn't tell if he was disappointed by the delay, or relieved - either way, there were shimmers of adrenalin in his sides and his neck. "You're on. I'll try to master right and left by then."

"I never saw you start for the wrong bench."

"I just always stood where I could see you." _I still sound like Gavin. Heaven help me._

* * *

July 19, 9:12pm

A week later and he was standing outside the agency in the warm night, his ancient running shoes scuffling against the sidewalk. Much like Polly, Edgeworth had expressed a dim view of driving in open-toed sandals. _Get the flap caught under a pedal and then where would we be? _It was late enough that the slow summer sun had set, the prosecutor's schedule being what it was. Phoenix's mind had just started to wander along with the leaves and paper cups blowing along the curb when the red car appeared and pulled past him into the parking lot. He strode over to it, his hands in his pockets, and his old rival opened the driver's door (even the door opening sounded expensive) and stepped out.

They looked at each other across a few feet of blacktop. "Jeeves," said Phoenix, when he couldn't think of anything better.

Edgeworth smiled mischievously, almost entirely with his eyes. _It used to kill me when he did that. _"Your chariot awaits."

"Except, of course, it's yours."

"Keep that in mind."

The oddity of sliding into the driver's seat of a luxurious sports car was almost enough to mask the oddity of sitting next to Miles again, with nobody else around. _If I say something stupid, maybe I can blame it on the setting._

"Let's go down along the Metro line, shall we?"

He checked the mirrors, took as a deep a breath as he thought he could without being obvious, and turned the key in the ignition.

It was the kind of vehicle that required a lot of attention to drive, and as a result there wasn't much conversation as they followed the path the rail took through this part of the city before it dove underground - just some intermittent fussy comments from the car's owner about what to do or not do.

_And yet this isn't nearly so stressful as thinking about it was. Funny. Maybe because so long as I've got him in his own fancy car, he's not going to disappear on me again - not unless he leaps out the passenger door and runs down the street in his shiny shoes._

They ran out of Metro. "Turn left up ahead; we can go until that T intersection and then left again."

"Whoops, no we can't." He'd made the left turn only to see flashing yellow lights and a big orange truck blocking the road a block and a half ahead.

"Hmph. Turn when you can, then, and we'll cut over." Edgeworth noticed him trying to peer ahead to see what the problem actually was. "Oh, keep your eyes on where you're going. I'll try to assuage your curiosity." He squinted out into the semidarkness himself. "It looks like a sinkhole. At least in Germany they don't build the roads to fall apart on purpose."

Phoenix tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Miles. Why did you come back here, anyhow?" He hadn't known he would ask that before trying to find out why he'd **left**, but so be it if it sounded angrier this way. He **was **angry, though it was a strange, long-burning flame.

"I returned at my sister's urging. She seemed to make the decision to return very precipitously...though in retrospect I think she must have been considering the possibility long before she ever mentioned it to me."

"So it was all Franziska? If she hadn't called the movers, you'd still be drinking beer and eating pretzels and that would be it?"

"Wright...I didn't think you wanted me to come back. So I don't entirely understand why you sound upset."

_Don't play innocent, Edgeworth. Don't. _"And I don't understand why you sound like you don't care. From what I remember, you would have spoken up quite unmistakably if Franziska happened to bring home the wrong kind of bread. It makes no sense to me that she could tell you to pack up and come back to America and you'd just trot off and get your suitcase out of the hall closet."

"I was a highly accomplished sleepwalker."

"Don't you DARE. Don't you DARE tell me your seven years missing were an agreeable haze for you. Not when you know that I've been without a career, without a regular income, without any kind of assurance for the future beyond being determined to take care of Trucy and pin Kristoph to the wall. I could have used you around for **EVERY SINGLE DAY **of it. So DON'T tell me that kind of thing. Even if it's true."

The tone of the silence told him that Edgeworth wasn't going to respond right away. They were going faster than strictly necessary past the chain-link fence that surrounded the junior high school Trucy had attended. Beyond the fence, the tall gymnasium wall had a faded, stylized coyote painted on it.

"Wright...Phoenix." That clearly had taken him some effort. _But hey, look at me. I'm so cool I didn't drive into a tree when he said my real name._

_...But is that all he's going to say? _Short blocks of single-story houses went by, houses with faded trim and brown lawns and basketball hoops in the driveways. And black house numbers stenciled on the curbs. Eight hundred block. Seven hundred block.

"I failed you-"

The words exploded. "**YOU THINK SO?** Did you just realize that right this minute? Self-absorption never did make your thought processes any faster, Miles, but **COME ON**!"

They were coming back up on a major street, and he managed to pull the car to a stop before the crosswalk, but not by much.

"Don't tell me how you disappointed me, okay? Even if you can lay it out more eloquently than I can. I don't need to hear it, because I already know. Maybe next time I see you we can talk about something else. But right now, I'm going home."

For a moment, as they passed a vacant lot between apartment buildings where an old structure had been torn down, moonlight poured sideways into the car, and the man who'd let him down looked - just so beautiful. If you forgot the past. And if you were denying a future.

* * *

July 20, 6:16pm

Los Angeles was a pit. A greedy, thoughtless sprawl of a city that grew criminals in its wretched schools and amongst its snarl of freeways. Which meant that the Prosecutor's Office was busy, which was in alignment with his preferences today. He'd spent the morning untangling details of five different cases - one for Klavier (there was no way around it), one for Payne, and three for Libra. That was fine; she was an intelligent and civil woman, but they didn't socialize. And so long as he was in important meetings with her, he couldn't very well be pulled away for small talk with anyone else. He even managed to evade Franziska for the entire day, and without the help of the head secretary. He wasn't entirely sure the sympathies of the latter would be with him this time.

But it was Franziska's fault, in a way, that he wasn't able to remain isolated until it was time to get into the red car, with its current clutter of associations, and go home. The sun was setting and the sky behind the tall buildings was yellowing as he found himself between tasks and without anyone to acquire a new one from. The thoughts he'd been shoving away all day came back.

Half of one sentence.

_I failed you when I tried to help._

If he'd gotten the whole thing out.

Looking back, though, it was agonizingly simple to see why he hadn't. Dragging things out had always been his fallback habit. And Wright's had always been interruption.

Now the explanation, if he could give it, would sound more like an excuse than ever. What would Maya Fey think - and what would his father think?

* * *

_Are you ever going to tell him why you left?_

* * *

Someone was pounding on the next door over. _Give up. If she hasn't responded, she's either deliberately ignoring you or not there at all, and either way it's hopeless._ But the knocking persisted longer than he expected, and his peeved satisfaction when it finally stopped was interrupted when it relocated itself to **his **door. But just for a moment, almost as a pleasantry, because it was (of course) Gumshoe.

"Hello, sir! Is your sister still here?"

"No."

"Oh, well, it's too bad she didn't remember to tell me she was leaving earlier today! Guess this'll have to wait 'til tomorrow." He was holding a fat file folder in one hand, which was at least an improvement over a carton. "How did the driving lesson go, sir?"

And at that moment he very much wished he'd told the detective to close the door behind him, because Klavier appeared in the doorway, with Justice next to him, and came into the room and said, a bit more than casually, "Ja, how did that go?"

He wouldn't be a lawyer if he couldn't respond to undesired questions. "Every time a yellow light turns red he seems to find it somewhat surprising. Other than that? He's fine."

What happened next...was strange. Apollo gave him one of those piercing looks, and without saying anything squeezed Klavier's arm, once.

And Klavier Gavin flat out turned into a different person.

"Fine? That is all?"

"That is more than enough."

"You are **lying**." Klavier's gait still wasn't very graceful, but what he was currently lacking in elegance he made up for in volume, circling the desk and stopping at the senior prosecutor's side. "Herr Edgeworth - I care about what happens here. I am speaking for several people. And I do not have to be nice. Nice is how I **prefer **to be - but it is not mandatory. Please, look this way."

This tone of voice was fathoms away from the musician's characteristic playfulness. And Edgeworth didn't especially want to look up. Lack of glasses or no, he steeled himself against staring straight at, well, **Kristoph**, before he turned his head. And when the stern face was still nothing like **that **one, the relief he felt mixed with the anxiety stirred by the granite blue stare to leave him babbling. "The prisoners are in the barn."

"**What?**"

"The prisoners are in the barn, the stolen goods are buried behind the bell tower, the explosives are in the basement of the tavern, and my accomplice is waiting for me with a rowboat so we can make our escape under the cover of nightfall. I commend you on your interrogation skills, Kommissar." It wasn't lost on him that this was something that the ordinary Klavier might have said.

"It is past time to stop being ridiculous, don't you think?" Oh, he wanted the ordinary Klavier to come back as soon as possible. "Yesterday's lesson did not go well, did it?"

Of course Apollo, of course here to give motorcycle-less Klavier a ride home, would have known at least that much.

"Herr Edgeworth, what went wrong?"

He had meant to explain to Wright and let the pieces fall how they would before telling anyone else the story. And he didn't know how he felt about telling Klavier, who was the antagonist's brother, much less Apollo who he didn't know very personally, and-

"...Detective? You…already know, don't you."

The big man was still there, watching the scene wide-eyed. His reply had a kind of apologetic dignity. "Sir. I HAVE known. Your sister explained it to me. Years ago. And I'm still very sorry about it, sir."

He took a deep breath. "Klavier, this story is about Kristoph."

"It would be." This was still the different Klavier, the one with thin lips and a slow voice devoid of humor. But Apollo put an arm around his waist anyhow, and seeing that, Edgeworth could only feel slightly disappointed in himself for being surprised by it. Strangely, though, the feeling made it easier to begin talking.

"I was Manfred von Karma's protégé. You know that. And it led to certain pervasive questions about the beginning of my career. Which Kristoph was well aware of, when I went to see him about Wright's disbarment..."

* * *

July 21, 6:15pm

The impromptu meeting had broken up, somberly and promptly, after he'd gotten all the way through the turn things had taken in the car. But to his surprise, all three of his visitors returned the next day.

"Herr Edgeworth, you must invite Herr Wright out for a driving lesson again."

"You're mad."

"Not at all. He did mention seeing you again, after all."

"Not in a very encouraging manner."

"A little encouragement should be quite sufficient if you do want him to know the truth. And you are forgetting that if he intends to earn his driver's license before Thanksgiving, he needs someone to drive with him. Apollo will not. I certainly will not. I have spoken to Ema Skye, and she will not. Your SISTER will not. And I am entirely capable of making sure that Herr Detective is too busy to live up to his earlier offer. Detective Gumshoe, you are very busy."

"Yes, sir!"

"You see. Set it for a week from now."

Edgeworth turned his attention to Apollo, standing by the window. "Is your boss likely to be at the agency at the moment?"

"As far as I know. He's there most of the time these days, with breaks to chase the mailman. Even though he knows the bar results aren't out yet."

"Hm." In better circumstances it would have been a laugh. "If everyone could be quiet for a moment." He dialed. Wright answered. He offered, Wright accepted. There had been less warmth in the exchange than there might have been between a distracted customer and a tired cashier, but it was done.

* * *

July 29, 9:53am

The morning of the second lesson, Klavier appeared carrying two large, flat, and very precisely wrapped boxes, with elegant designs in red on the lids.

"What are those?"

Klavier put one down ceremoniously on the bookshelf and brought the other to the desk, waving it under Edgeworth's nose as he fussed with the bow. "This is a box of very, **very **good Belgian chocolates. I am glad that they arrived in time." At that, he removed the lid with a flourish. The glossy contents were exactly as he had described, and the sweet smell seemed to fill the small room in an instant.

"From Belgium, I assume."

"But of course."

"And why are you giving them to me?"

"Don't you like them?"

He tried to be stern - though not too stern. He had enough to think about without instigating another talk with the Kommissar. "I **do**. But it isn't a holiday, and you're quite happily in love with someone else."

"Ah, well. The BIG box is for Fräulein Skye, who as of tomorrow will officially no longer be a detective but a forensic scientist. And the other big box is for Apollo, who does not need a reason. And the medium-size ones are in my office and right here, because after all they are delicious."

"And the small ones?"

"Herr Edgeworth, I never buy anyone the SMALL ones."

"I ought to have realized."

"You ought to have, yes. But THAT box, on the shelf there, is for Herr Wright, who no longer shouts at me because he no longer seems to speak when I am present at all. It is a peace offering which I rely upon you to deliver."

Facing Wright armed with candy did seem slightly preferable to facing him again without candy. "Thank you. And I'll make sure he gets it."

"Ja!" Klavier plucked one of the chocolates out of the open box on the desk and dropped it onto Edgeworth's tea saucer before leaving the room.

* * *

July 29, 9:21pm

Apollo had said no. Ema had said no. Gumshoe was busy. And despite this string of refusals, Phoenix still wasn't sure why he'd acquiesced. It was true, he'd explicitly mentioned seeing Miles again, but there was a justification for that. They knew too many of the same people. And with any luck, he'd be back in the courtroom soon too. They couldn't avoid one another forever.

And the DMV was unforgiving.

And Trucy had given him the puppy eyes from across the room while he was on the phone.

And **there was no other and**. No other and.

His running shoes crunched against the sidewalk, the paper cups blew along the gutter, and when the red car's headlights appeared he recognized them.

He wasn't sure why it took Edgeworth longer than before to get out of the car until he came over to the driver's side himself and saw the flat box sitting on the seat.

"What is this? The manly equivalent of a grocery store bouquet with a little card that says _I'm Sorry_?" He climbed into the car, Edgeworth following quickly, and deposited the box behind the seat after giving it a quick look.

"That is from Prosecutor Gavin, to you. I'm merely the messenger. Ema passed her Forensics exam and starts in her new position tomorrow."

"And that means Klavier gives me something?" But the defensive knot in his chest had loosened. "I'm glad for Ema, though. She wasn't happy where she was." He'd already started the car and now he pulled out into the street, heading the opposite direction from last time, toward the now-empty skyscrapers of downtown.

"No, she wasn't. This is a good development." The silver-haired man sighed then, as if the more agreeable topic had eased the air for him, too. "At any rate, Klavier ordered her an enormous box of chocolates straight from Belgium, no doubt as an upgrade to those things she inhales from the vending machine. And Apollo will most likely be bringing home a very similar gift, if he hasn't already done so."

"I think Klavier's keeping him tonight. They're so happy it's irritating." But of course irritating irritable Edgeworth was immune to such unworthy emotions when it came to the Flopsy Bunnies, which only made him more irritating himself.

"And he brought what is reportedly a more modest box to my office this morning, and that one the same size for you. He's noticed that you don't speak to him."

"Talking to Klavier is like talking to a Marx Brother. Or a slot machine. It's all remarks that only make seventy-five percent sense, accompanied by addictive little noises and colored lights."

Edgeworth actually snorted at that. "He has his moments. But his precise term for that box was 'peace offering.' So you might want to try at least a hello next time."

"Duly noted." The conversation remained in shallow water.

"Where are we going?"

"The old Prudential building on Figueroa. The streets downtown should be pretty empty at this hour, and I have a weird desire to see that statue of the guy with his head in the wall again."

"Stay away from Skid Row and look out for fire trucks."

"Obviously." They rode in tranquility for a while, talking about traffic and the streets and the car when they talked at all, and the buildings rose higher above the sidewalks, and in what seemed like only a little time they were at the corner in question.

"Wright, you know we can't really get out of the car here. And the underground lots aren't all open at this time of night."

"That's okay. If I just pull up a little - how do I put the emergency blinkers on in this thing?"

"You're supposed to be learning how to drive like a good citizen!"

"Ah, big triangle button. Here we go." He pressed it and drew the car up to the curb. The statue's silhouette was visible, if not well lit. "I always liked this guy. Municipal art should be freaky more often."

"Mm."

"You know there's a plate with a poem on it next to him, if you look down?"

"Yes. There's a plaza near here with a few more works of art like this."

"You would know, wouldn't you... Hey, hand me that box. I could use a Belgian chocolate right about now."

"Where did you put it?" Edgeworth reached for the overhead light and turned it on.

"Behind the - never mind, I'll get it myself." He did, twisting around under his seat belt to reach it and pulling off the ribbon. "So are these hazelnut or...hold ON. What the?"

The box didn't contain chocolates at all. Instead it was filled nearly to capacity by a flat black leather-bound notebook that was recognizable as a day planner. And the year stamped on the front in gold was 2019.

Edgeworth, if anything, looked MORE surprised than Phoenix felt. "Oh, DAMN you, damn you, Klavier, what do you think you've-"

This book was not at all in keeping with Klavier's personal style, as Phoenix understood it. Well, okay, it was **black**, but it wasn't sleek, it wasn't ballistic-matte or vinyl-glossy, it didn't have a band logo on it anywhere. It was plain and expensive-looking and not at all cool - and it was disturbingly familiar. Stomach curling in on itself, he opened it and looked down at the neat, curly, narrow handwriting."

"He's - given me Kristoph's datebook. And no, I don't think this was you. You don't feign shock quite that well. But this is from the year I was disbarred. What does he think I WANT with-" He flipped the pages to mid-April. 'April 19. Enigmar trial. Klavier 1st. Wright. Bar Association meeting. Wright.' Charming." His voice had taken on an edge. "PM. Office. M. -" and it stopped for a moment - "Edgeworth." He didn't have enough information. He didn't know whether he should feel betrayed, bamboozled, enlightened. He wanted to cry, even if he didn't know why yet. "You. You had an appointment with Gavin after I lost my badge?"

"I didn't make an appointment with him. He just – already knew I was coming."

"**WHY**?"

"Why do you **SUPPOSE**?" The prosecutor interrupted himself. "Wright, that's a police car that just turned this way on Figueroa two blocks back. See the blue light? We'll need to move the car. Do you need me to drive?" He sounded nearly as overwrought as Phoenix felt.

"No, I've got it. Turn the overhead off." He jabbed at the button for the emergency lights himself, and began driving again, jerkily in the sudden darkness, the book still on his lap. He picked a direction he knew wasn't Skid Row and started turning away from the skyscrapers, into the narrow streets of old apartment buildings and auto repair shops and urgent care clinics. "I don't know what I suppose. I don't know why I didn't know about this. Or whether I want to." His voice rose unbidden. "Did this have to do with why you **left?**"

"Wright, look OUT!" He'd been looking at the center of the street, eyes glazed, and so he was late to notice the tan shape of the dog bursting out from the alley next to a small, windowless stucco church and straight into the path of his headlights. Edgeworth grabbed at the steering wheel he was already twisting by reflex, and as he mashed the brake pedal down he could almost remember what the driver's handbook had had to say on the subject of skids. The tires wailed, the fabulous car spun sideways, and there was a very loud bang.

A very loud, very definite bang.

It took – well, he wasn't sure just how long it took for his head to clear and his pulse to slow back down to something manageable if not calm. He didn't think he'd hit the dog. But the rear left corner of the car was now up on the curb and crushed into a big dark blue mailbox, and the passenger's side door was hanging open, and Edgeworth wasn't there.


	9. Hard to Swallow

July 29, 10:11pm

He was shaken and sore, but not actually hurt, and after another minute he got out of the car. The door still opened. Which was good.

But he was by himself. Which wasn't.

Which really really really wasn't oh my god. He hurled himself around the other side of the vehicle, looking for a figure lying in the road, which would not make sense because how does someone get flung out the passenger door if the rear driver's side is what hit something, and there's no body in the road, and no dog either except where IS he?

"**MILES?!**"

There was no answer.

"**MILES?! WHERE ARE YOU?**"

He nearly jumped out of his skin when something dark sailed past and bounced off the asphalt about a foot from where he was standing.

It was a dress shoe. What the hell? "**MILES?!**"

"Here, Wright, for God's sake, stop scaring him." He turned towards the voice, the same direction the airborne shoe had come from, and finally saw the man in the red suit on one knee in the entrance of a papered-over storefront. He hadn't been shouting; he'd just made his voice **carry**, the way Phoenix knew perfectly well how to do when he wasn't confused and terrified. "Would you please get the keys out of the ignition and open the trunk, and get the length of clothesline out of it?"

_I can follow instructions._

He did all of those things and stood vacantly next to the open trunk for a second, until Edgeworth said, still calmly and politely, "Thank you. Now could you bring that over here, not too quickly?"

_Not too quickly?_

He complied, and the first wisps of logic came back into his thought processes when he saw that Miles had the dog.

Dog. Very generic dog. Light brown, black on top. Large ears. Phoenix stayed quiet and placed the nylon cord into the hand that reached back for it. Edgeworth murmured something reassuring, scratched the animal's ruff, then looped the clothesline loosely around its neck and tied a knot too quickly for it to cotton on to what had just happened.

"There we are. Is this so terrible?" This seemed to be a pretty phlegmatic dog, because all it did was twitch one ear and take a couple of sideways steps with its back legs. "Well, it's off to the night vet, I suppose."

"Edgeworth, um - what?"

"Keys?"

He handed them over, but. "The car is-"

"The car should be at least drivable." And the COMPLETELY CONFUSING man led the dog back across the street, opened the rear door that wasn't currently part of a mailbox, and said, "Up, Pescador." The dog knew that dogs love cars, and just got in, and the prosecutor firmly shut both the passenger-side doors and the trunk. "I'll take you home first."

Phoenix tried again. "Pescador?"

Edgeworth pointed to the little church from whose side alley the dog had bolted. Its painted sign said, first in English and then in Spanish,

Los Angeles Church of the Fishers of Men  
Welcome!  
¡Bienvenidos!  
Iglesia de los Pescadores de Hombres de Los Angeles

There was also a little box with a slot in the top fixed to the wall. Edgeworth seemed to think about it for a minute, then opened his wallet for a fifty-dollar bill and walked over and slid it inside.

"I didn't think you were religious."

"We didn't hit him. You're all right." And with that Edgeworth seemed content to go, getting in the driver's door, but Phoenix held back, pulling a five out of his much shabbier wallet, pushing it into the box, and glancing at the dark roof over the entryway. _Sorry. Thanks._

The car was back in the street completely and facing almost the right direction when he let himself into the passenger seat. Edgeworth looked over at him in a weirdly philosophical way, almost relaxed, and Phoenix was so busy noticing that that he sat on Kristoph's book.

* * *

July 29, 10:57pm

When he got back to the agency, clumping gracelessly up the darkened stairs and having more trouble with the lock than usual, he found Apollo and Trucy sitting altogether too patiently in the front room. She was bent over what looked like a wire sculpture, and he was holding a folded-over court transcript and biting his lower lip.

"If your boyfriend is hiding behind the coatrack or Vera is under the table, have the decency to tell me now."

They looked innocent.

He faced nothing in particular and bellowed. "Vera? KLAVIER? Anybody else? Olly olly oxen free! I'm not in the mood for surprises!"

Trucy flushed. "Shut up, Daddy, there's nobody."

"Great. Good." He wasn't too sure what he was going to say, actually, but he didn't feel comfortable being **lurked** for, and his nerves were buzzing.

"So how did that go?" Not that tact was one of Trucy's specialties.

"The car is going to be spending some serious time in the shop, Miles has a new dog, and someone at the candy factory must have made a little mistake, Apollo, because instead of hazelnut truffles, I got THIS." He frisbeed the book at the couch in a flutter of pages.

Polly wasn't intimidated. "Be careful. We had to take his office apart to find that."

Trucy draped herself over the back of the couch. "So what's he gonna name the dog? And can I walk it? I'd be a great dog walker."

He had the oppressive feeling that people were four steps ahead of him in several different directions.

* * *

July 30, 9:56am

The next morning, he called Maya. At least she did carry a cell everywhere with her now; connectivity up there was much better than it had been, and the days of calling the pay phone in the road and just hoping someone would answer it (and then get word to the person you actually wanted) were over.

"Good morning!"

"You would say that."

"Hi, Nick! And it is. It is a beautiful morning, as a matter of fact."

"How would you feel about missing it?"

"Say what?"

"Want to jump on a bus and come down for a visit? Burgers? The big city?"

"Mm, I DO, but let's do this properly if we're going to do it. Give me a couple days to get things in order up here and I'll bring Pearl down with me. And then maybe Trucy can come back up with us for a little? School's still out, yeah?"

"Yeah. And I like your idea of bringing Pearl. Truce should spend more time with people her own age."

"Doesn't she have school friends?"

"She does. But right now her predominant social circle involves three people in their twenties...and even though I can't criticize any of them without sounding like just her mean old dad, it IS strange."

"One of them is Apollo?"

"Of course."

"Wait, do they know?"

"It's a point of contention. Lamiroir prefers not to tell them yet."

"She'll have to eventually-"

"- but I can't just preempt her, even if it's tempting."

"One hundred percent what I was gonna say. But still, that was a tangent. If one of them's Apollo, who are the others?"

"Three guesses. You won't even need three."

"So long as they're not people I've never heard of and you say, 'Duh, FERNANDO!' like it should have been totally obvious and I don't even know there was a Fernando."

"Wait, I never introduced you to him?"

"Shut up, you're not funny and I hate you."

"Ha. No, I promise, you've heard of them."

She didn't say anything for quite a few seconds, but the nameless noises that made it through the line helped him picture her leaning against a wall, tapping her chin with one finger of the hand holding the pink phone, its strap swinging.

"Vera Misham."

"Very good. How'd you know?"

"She looked sweet and all by herself and young for her age."

"I think you've hit upon a theme with that last one."

"Oh, now you just gave it away! Ruin my fun! Prosecutor Gavin."

"None other. He's WITH Apollo, for your information."

"Ooh. That's a sexy image."

"MAYA!" She was laughing loudly, and he pulled the receiver away from his ear for a moment.

"Gotcha. Hey, don't be too jealous, okay?"

"Envious."

"Whatever. You know what I mean."

He was feeling a little spacy as he wound up the call with Maya - she had that effect - but wasn't given any time at all to indulge that condition. Instead, Apollo appeared a few inches from his face as he spun his chair around.

"Gah! Don't do that, Polly."

"Up. Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"The DMV. You're taking your driving test today."

"I AM CERTAINLY NOT! Are you kidding? I wrecked Edgeworth's car yesterday!"

_Oh, right, I wrecked Edgeworth's car yesterday. I'd forgotten about that for fifteen minutes. That's marvelous._

"That's WHY you're going today. I heard all about what happened to it. I have spies everywhere."

"More than one? Really? I'll tell Klavier. I bet he'd throw things and cry. And write a really CATCHY song about you."

"Shut up, sir."

"No, Polly, seriously, that was a hell of a nervous shock. And I'm still short on practice hours."

"You know that rule is only absolute for teenagers, right? All you'll have to do is sign a form saying you're the head of your own household and that you qualify for an exemption under hardship conditions. It's not like you have a proper income yet."

"But I thought it would be...you know, a good idea to do it right..."

"Since when do you care about dotting the i's? No, Mr. Edgeworth said you really should go today before you had a chance to get too nervous about driving after all."

"And what am I supposed to drive?"

"Sandra. But wearing the camera hat. If you're less than a perfect gentleman with her, I promise, the world will know."

He tried one more thing. "Maybe they won't let me take the driving test in a hat."

"They didn't mind my hair. Up. Time is money."

"Mine's not."

"Mine is. And Trucy knows where you keep your checkbook."

"Justice, you have a cold and rocky soul."

"It's tough love. Maybe in a few years I'll let you drink and vote."

* * *

When he passed the test, he embarrassed himself by hugging the woman with the clipboard who'd administered it. Maybe it was an omen. According to the ID she had on a lanyard around her neck, her name was Sandy - but in case he was wrong about what it was short for, he didn't ask.

* * *

August 10, 10:35am

He still didn't have his real license to show Maya when she arrived, since nothing could make the physical card with his picture come in the mail any faster, but he did have the provisional piece of paper they'd given him, and when he met Maya and Pearl at Union Station, with Trucy bouncing around him in excited semicircles, he had it in his pocket.

The two girls hugged, but Pearl drew back a little bit when Trucy informed here they were going to Little Tokyo for lunch with Apollo et al., who were outside circling the overfull parking lot in Sandra. Maya was renting a car at the station. It had been a squished ride over.

"We just came from Kurain, you know." Pearl had always been subject to weird moments of jealousy, and this looked like one. Despite the bordering-on-elegance of her appearance, her hands were balled up. "Are we really going there?"

"Pearl, you know you're not telling me you don't like ramune and lunch sets and people-watching and plastic toys. Don't be silly." And Trucy hauled her off by one hand.

Once they were out of earshot (though not out of sight; Phoenix wouldn't feel right leaving the girls until they were safely in the little black car) Maya said, "Hey, Nick."

"Hey yourself."

"Pearls seems a little unhappy."

"She'd be the same way with Trucy's school friends, I think. It bothers her sometimes that Truce HAS other friends - but of course what's really bothering her is that she misses Truce and she feels like she lives at the back of beyond. She'll need to learn."

"Learn what?"

"Oh, that their friendship isn't so fragile. And that thing about accepting what you cannot change and changing what you can."

"And knowing the difference. A wise Irish refrigerator magnet once taught me that."

"I must have met the same one. Good to see you, bum."

"It's good to see you, Maya."

Standing outside the doors, they watched the two girls pile into the long-suffering compact, then went back inside. Maya scanned the signs, looking for the rental counter, then strode briskly off along the slick floor of one of the hallways. He had to jump to catch up.

The rental agent had clearly never dealt with anyone quite like her, but seemed more entertained than disconcerted, and she ended up with a big smile and a discount.

Out in the lot, she located the glossy electric blue vehicle they'd been assigned and dangled the key fob under his nose. "Vroom!"

"It's perfect for you. I've never seen a rental car with a spoiler before."

"Says the man with a spoiler for hair. Anyway, you're driving it."

"I hadn't told you I passed yet!"

"So that IS a provisional license sticking out of your pocket!"

"I'm still happy to see you..."

"Oh, please. Don't drop that, you'll be so sad if you do. And you may not have told me, but Trucy did text Pearl in a burst of filial pride. Secret's out. Burgers, James!"

"Does your rental agreement cover a secondary driver who's had his license for less than two weeks?"

"Don't worry your spiky little head over the details. I'll tell you what. You drive, and I'll buy my own burgers today."

Which she had never, EVER done. He blinked, and the world was a different place.

"You're on. But we're taking surface streets, so I hope you're not too hungry."

"Where are you taking me?"

"Orange County."

* * *

August 10, 12:03pm

The bright blue car was more fun than he wanted to admit. It may have been a tub toy compared to Edgeworth's regatta yacht (or Gumshoe's freighter) but it was noisy and immature and GREAT.

After he pulled into the tiny parking lot in Costa Mesa and parked, Maya tapped him on the forehead. "No, you're not buying one."

"But."

"It costs MUCH too much and it's made out of enamel and kite string. But I thought you'd enjoy it for a weekend. I even made sure it was a blue one."

"I can never tell if you're ruthlessly sensible or reckless and insane, Maya, but I love you."

"I know." And she gave him a meaningful look and preceded him into the place.

As he had known she would, she fell head over heels for it instantly. The walls were plastered with skate stickers and the ceiling, not to be outdone, was covered with the colorful cardboard sleeves of old surf records. The painted menu hung on the wall above the grill and behind the counter. Seeing all this, she literally clasped her hands under her chin and sparkled.

"You ready to order?" The girl behind the counter didn't know what to make of the Master of Kurain either.

"As soon as she's done being transported with joy."

"Nick!" At first he thought she was indignant, but her voice became a plaint. "I forgot my wrap in the car! Would you get it? Please?"

"You have to be kidding. It's daytime. In August."

"You should already know that digestion reduces blood flow to the extremities! I'm just being prepared. Please?"

He went, and when he came back she was happily slumped in the corner booth, drinking out of a paper cup with a straw. A bottle of ketchup sat on the table. "I took the opportunity to order the first round. And pay for it, before you ask."

"Thanks." They chitchatted for a few minutes, over and around the sounds of the grill and the other customers and the fútbol broadcast on the television mounted in a corner.

"So Pearl said Trucy said she's been teaching her twenty-year-old friends magic tricks."

He laughed and coughed around a mouthful of cola. "Well, she's been TRYING to."

"Huh?"

"They're AWFUL is the problem. I thought at first that maybe, given a few years, she might get one halfway decent birthday party magician out of the three of them combined. But that was irrational optimism talking."

"Really?"

"Cross my heart. I wouldn't have thought you could start with two artists and one Gramarye and end up with so much fail, but happily I was wrong. They drop things, they break things, they get things stuck in their sleeves and make panicky expressions.

"Actually, it's glorious. Next time you're in a funk, just get on the next train and call ahead so Trucy can organize a performance."

"That's not very nice of you, but I might have to take you up on it anyway."

"Two veggie burgers." The girl in the black t-shirt appeared with a pair of plastic trays bearing paper plates.

"Thank you!" Maya beamed.

"VEGGIE BURGERS?" Without a backward glance, the girl returned to the safety of the other side of the counter.

"Correct!"

"Maya Fey, why are we eating veggie burgers?"

"We did say back in February that you should eat more vegetables."

"We did?"

"Me and Pearl and Trucy. You ARE still trying to live up to Larry's challenge, right?" And suddenly the conversation didn't feel entirely playful.

"I did take the bar."

"You did. So we'll call that one down and one presumptive, incoming. Congratulations on getting your license, by the way. Cheers!"

"Thanks. Nice to be congratulated by someone who doesn't smirk at the same time."

They tapped paper cups, and she excused herself for a moment to go refill them at the soda machine. He stared at the surface of the table between his hands. Then, because that didn't do anything for his mood, he started in on his veggie burger. At least it wasn't bad, though it wasn't what he'd been envisioning.

"So what's your third one going to be? I think you're out of time for the marathon, too."

"Learning to figure skate."

"You know, I'd accept that if I actually thought you were serious. But I know you're not."

"I don't know. At least I'm tied with Miles."

"Oh! He told you about-"

"That he's in therapy, yeah. And he just got a dog." According to Apollo, the brown and black animal was now the entire office's best and forever friend. But he was only Pescador to the people who spoke Spanish – "Pess" otherwise. Edgeworth had agreed to tolerate that in lieu of "Fishy," which was out of the question.

Maya was looking at him funny. "Nick, you have this terrible habit of interrupting people. I wasn't going to say anything about therapy. It's cool that he has a dog, though! What kind?"

"About like that mental image you get when someone says 'dog' and that's all you know. Medium-sized. Cute ears, though." Until he got to the ears, her expression had conveyed that this description was woefully inadequate. "So what were you going to say?"

"Well, I guess you're not tied after all. He came up to Kurain, did you know that?"

Phoenix's stomach flip-flopped. "No...I didn't."

"He did, though. He finally talked to his dad." She mistook the silence she received in response. "The real one, I mean. Gregory."

He cut her off, an unintentional rise in volume coming into his words. "Yeah, I know."

"You just said you didn't-"

"I knew who you MEANT. Is all."

"Seriously, you're terrible about interrupting. And RELAX a little, would you?"

It was unreasonably difficult to do that. Miles had seen his dad. Miles had done his three things.

He couldn't shake the idea that if Miles finished his list, then he might be leaving again.

"Earth to Nick. Eat up. I ordered the second round when I got more drinks. Genuine beef this time. And cheese. All those good things."

He smiled a little despite himself. "Wait 'til you taste them."

* * *

August 10, 1:09pm

It wasn't until they were absolutely stuffed and back in the car, moving slowly, that Maya brought up the subject again.

"So Nick...about Edgeworth. I keep waiting for you guys to work things out. And you keep, um, not. I guess I have to ask - am I wrong? Do you, like, not want to?"

"If you're so psychic, why are you asking?"

"Manners, for one." She looked at him expectantly, and when he looked back at her after a minute and a half of silence, while they were paused at a stop sign, she was still looking at him expectantly.

He sighed. "The same night he found the dog I smashed up his car. And THAT happened because I was distracted because I'd just found out that he went to see Kristoph Gavin the night of my disbarment. I still don't know why."

He heard fabric rustling and a sigh louder than his own, and a _tack _sound that might have been her fingernails against the dash. "Nick, I'm not going to tell you what happened in that meeting. **He** needs to tell you, and **you** need to **listen**. But honestly, don't you already know **why** he was there?"

"I just said I didn't!"

"Dummy!" The childishness of the insult took some of the sting out of it - he couldn't imagine anyone else he knew not going for a stronger word - but it was still a shock.

"Maya, what..."

"This is still Edgeworth! The man who chartered a plane from Europe when he thought your life was in danger! And who pretended to be a defense attorney to keep your case from falling apart!"

"I know..."

"And you still don't get it? He went over there to get you your badge back! To save you! Dummy!"

"Well, I don't think it worked."

"That is one late lightbulb, Mr. Legal Genius."

He swallowed hard and paid better attention to the road.

* * *

August 14, 4:43pm

Franziska actually had quite a few shining virtues, and quite a magnificent array of skills, but conveying difficult information gently was nowhere on either list. Though of course he knew not to expect it of her. So it wasn't quite the jolt to the system it might have been when he heard the click of lacquered heels come out of her office and towards his own, and she appeared in his doorway and said, "I hope, after all these years, that you do not have some foolish attachment to the Festung that I have not been informed of."

With that she closed the door and came over to stand in front of his desk. The Fortress had been their adolescent term for the von Karma manor in Germany. The place was massive, dark, out-of-date, and as charming as a power plant without being a fraction so useful.

"No. Of course not."

"That eases my mind."

He poured tea for both of them and set the second cup in front of the other chair, still just-off-opposite his own across the desk, the way Ema Skye had left it after briefing him on the smuggled drugs that had turned up in Los Angeles a few days ago in a shipment of women's coats. (Ema had grinned inappropriately several times during the discussion, but he'd been rather gratified to see it.)

"It's gone." She sat down abruptly.

"Don't tell me it caught fire? I would have thought it was too dank to burn."

"No. Don't be foolish. I doubt the incendiary exists that could heat the place anywhere near enough to result in genuine flames." Her smile was quick and tilted and sharp.

"So what has become of it?"

"It has been sold." She raised a gloved finger, as if to forestall an interruption. "Certain lingering business of Papa's necessitated it. The proceeds have been earmarked for such, less the portion that has already been distributed."

He tilted his teacup and watched the leaves at the bottom bobble slightly in the liquid. It was always awkward to hear Franziska refer to Manfred as Papa.

"But what business does he have left, after so many years?"

"Nothing that oughtn't to have been cleared up long ago." There was a clink from the dog bed in the corner, where Pescador had apparently picked up on the break in her voice. After a reassuring circuit of Miles' chair, he came around to Franziska and nosed her knee. She looked down at him and scratched expertly behind his ears. "Hm. Though I suppose the delay worked in someone's favor."

"Franziska, I know you were designated Manfred's sole heir." She didn't say anything. "You're perfectly within your rights to handle the property as you see fit, but you could have asked me for help with any bureaucratic bother. You've been occupied enough with your secretive business with Detective Gumshoe, not to mention your professional responsibilities." Again she said nothing. "Unless, of course, this was actually part and parcel of your business with Gumshoe?"

She looked at her hands, which meant yes. "Franziska, what is this? What does Scruffy have to do with Manfred? And who is the girl?"

"Little brother, I am so very close to being able to tell you **properly**. And you were heard to say you trusted me. Do not make me regret my efforts."

"You weren't forced to come in to tell me the house was gone."

"I suppose not. But it seemed better to give that its own conversation. In case it upset you."

"Little sister...that's atypically compassionate of you."

"You have no idea."

The oblique, softened look she had over the rim of the teacup was not one he knew on her. And so he **didn't** have an idea. But so long as she was here, he had something else to say.

"I need to speak to Adrian."

That surprised her. "Do you. Why?"

"To thank her. And to apologize."

She watched him very closely. "What for?"

"The thanks are for looking after you. It's evident that she has. And the apology...the apology is for - is for. Seeing Dr. Crow has clarified my thinking on many subjects. Including mental health itself. And I understand now that when I made use of her past - I was behaving grotesquely."

"Miles Edgeworth, there is hope for you."

"Treat her well. At the very least, it may improve the odds of her forgiving me."

* * *

August 19, 5:10pm

It was late in the day for a surprise visitor, at least for one who wasn't a coworker of some kind. Organized people made appointments, frantic ones showed up first thing in the morning, and friendly ones showed up during the lunch hour.

"Are you busy?"

And disbarred attorneys carrying dog biscuits generally didn't show up at all.

"Can I come in? At least to ask about your car?"

Edgeworth spared a glance up the row at his fellow prosecutors' doors. They were all closed. Suspiciously so. And another look over Wright's shoulder revealed that the bullpen was only sparsely occupied, and only by people who seemed preoccupied.

"By all means." He shut the door behind them, though the stillness in the air afterwards almost made him regret it.

"Hello, Pescador." It was hard to tell if the dog recognized Wright or was simply friendly, but he was a good ambassador, wagging his way over to the door and pricking up his ears. And the treats cemented the bargain.

"For heaven's sake, Wright, what kind of dog snacks are these? Filet mignon? He'll be eating better than either of us."

"I bought them at a silly fancy dog store. At a price I refuse to divulge, except to say that I'm very relieved that he likes them and that Trucy is likely to earn herself a college scholarship when the time comes."

"And why are you bribing my dog in the first place?"

"I'm bribing you."

"With dog treats? I'm almost insulted."

"And here I was trying to appeal to your sentimental side."

_As though you need to make a particular effort to do that. _He'd been over with the tea things while Wright played with Pess, and the saucer he placed in front of the blue-eyed man held not just a cup, but several of the Belgian chocolates.

"What's this?"

"I saved you half of mine, after what your box turned out to contain. Speaking of bribes."

"Maybe I got the better box after all." Their eyes met. "Miles? Would you, just...finally tell me about the meeting you had with Kristoph? Please? I can't crash the desk. I'm not even in the driver's seat."

"Even so I wouldn't put it past you somehow. But...yes. Though I would appreciate it if you were to put the lock on the door. I would prefer not to be interrupted." Wright got up to do that. The various items on the desk looked small and irrelevant. They all had their particular jobs, none of which had anything to do with this. They weren't going to help.

Wright would like this metaphor. _What happens when you use your ace in the hole and it doesn't work? What if, afterwards, all you have is a hole?_

_Actually, he would know precisely what that's like. _Wright came back.

"So...let's hear it." Not unfriendly, but not necessarily trusting either.

"Wright...he **hated** you."

"...I HAD already figured that out, you know."

"You didn't know it then."

"And you did?"

"I knew he was playing at something. Not at what." He sighed before continuing. "But you know there were people on that board who should have been more sympathetic to your situation than he was. It made no sense that he was the only vote in your favor."

"To get me to think of him as my ally in a hostile world, obviously."

"Yes, Wright, but not **just** that. I'm not flattering myself now, please understand, I'm explaining. He already knew what I thought of him. He knew I had a history of trying to, well, swoop in with guns blazing to save the day."

"Miles, what an image."

"Well, yes, I know. Not to mention that it didn't tend to go as planned."

"Still. Credit for nice thoughts, I suppose."

"Don't patronize me."

"Then get on with it."

"His not only being your only supporter, but allowing that fact to be known, were as good as phoning me to arrange a meeting. As good as signing his name in honey on the whole awful mess. I couldn't not go. So I went."

"Hoping to accomplish what?"

"To prove his complicity. To get you reinstated. For what little it turned out to be worth, I DID have a plan better than just knocking out a few of his teeth and calling him names."

"Though that's an image I like better."

"I was recording him."

"Then what - My GOD, Miles, where is the RECORDING?" _He keeps using my name._

"That's for the end. But I haven't been holding it back, if that's what you're asking."

Wright sat back down, the lightning fading from his eyes. "Sorry. I suppose you wouldn't. Anyway."

"He acknowledged that the Bar Association was his to manipulate in situations like this one. And told me to stay away from you."

"Advice you followed impeccably."

He would have liked to curse for a while, but that wouldn't help either. "Listen very carefully for the next part and do not interrupt me until I put this cup down." Phoenix gave him a hard look, but nodded. "He knew about Miles Edgeworth, Demon Prosecutor. And pointed out that he could have me disbarred just as easily."

The look in those blue eyes was terrible to see, and the former attorney's arm actually jerked as though he'd been about to slam his hand into the (**glass**-topped) desk, but Edgeworth tensed up and held his stare, and lifted the cup a little instead of putting it down, and there was no interruption.

"I said listen. The threat of disbarment on its own was **not** sufficient. The real threat was the next step.

"After disbarring me, he said he would reopen every case we'd worked on together. He would have put Maya back on trial for Mia's murder. Will Powers back on trial. And he'd overturn all of the convictions, too. Matt Engarde. Gant. Everything. Unless I went back to Europe. Without telling you why." He looked at the empty saucer. Wondered how he could be so frightened. And, without looking up at Wright, put the teacup down.

The careful reply wasn't quite a reply, yet. "And the recording?"

"I thought I had him. Until I went to leave, and he slammed me against the door and got my phone away from me. And smashed it to pieces. Not because he'd seen it. Just because he knew it was there."

The silence stretched. Warm, still air. He could hear someone in another office pulling their blinds open or closed. The burble of a pigeon outside the window, and the whistle of its wings as it departed. The dog breathing. When he got up his nerve to look at Phoenix, Phoenix wasn't looking at him.

And when the response came, he almost mistook the first word for a sigh. "I didn't think that I could loathe that man more than I already did."

It was his turn not to know what to say first, and Phoenix resumed. "But seven **years**. You should have **TOLD** me, you should have..."

"Wright! The you NOW, absolutely! No one doubts your ability to think one thing and say another. But THEN? Awkward innocence and honesty were what made you famous. Gavin expressed his intention to befriend you and to drop the guillotine the moment he thought you suspected anything of this. And by the time you were canny enough to know, I…didn't know **you**…and you wouldn't have trusted me anyhow."

Wright swallowed hard. "Miles, a justified lack of faith is still painful." _My name again._

He took his own deep breath. "Phoenix. I know."

He couldn't read the man's face. Not that it was closed off, but that there were too many layers to the expression, blurring each other like multiple blocks of print across one page. He felt his own face shift as they looked at one another, each periodically glancing away and returning. And then Phoenix slid one hand across the desk, open, and he took it. He couldn't say what it meant, other than that it didn't mean distance.

"What was your sister doing, anyway? Gumshoe said she was trying forever to bring you back."

"She WAS? But she knew..."

"Wait, that was a surprise?"

"I know she's been working on **something** with him. She sold the estate in Germany. And there's someone else involved, this-"

"-young woman. I heard her voice when she called Gumshoe. But I couldn't place her."

"Yes. I - I need to figure this out more than I knew, I think, but I CAN'T think right now."

"Neither can I. This...was a lot of information for one afternoon. I'd...I need to go over it all in my head." They hadn't let go of each other's hands, exactly. "Miles, I know you've done your three things for Larry. Therapy. Kurain. Dog. But if I need a little time to sort my brain out, you'll still...be here afterwards?"

"Without question."

"I don't mean years. I mean days."

"I'm not going."

"Thank you." Awkwardly, jerkily, he got up. Then a thought crossed his face, as obvious as a change in the light. "But I never asked about your car..."

"Insured. Don't worry."

"Do you mean it? Are you sure?"

"Quite." And as insignificant as the matter feels in the face of the rest of the conversation, he sees the relief fly across the man's face too. The dog chooses that moment to lean his head against his knee, behind the desk, and that gives him the courage to say something more. "If I've taken that concern away, let me add…one other thing, to what you'll be pondering."

Almost to the door, the blue-eyed man stops. "What is it?"

_This may not have been what my father had in mind. And it may not be the bravest way to say it. But it's now and it's all the nerve I have left._ "Kristoph knew that I loved you."


	10. Announcements and Distractions

August 19, 5:24pm

Wright stopped in his tracks, just an extra arm's length from the door. _Like me in front of Kristoph's door. And me in the chair like Kristoph._The part of his brain responsible for overextending similes suggested jumping out of the chair and pinning the other man to the door, but the rest rejected that as one-sided, thoughtless, crazy. Liable to ruin everything that he hadn't just ruined already.

The blue eyes, after a seeming age, stopped focusing on the empty air in front of the doorknob and turned to him, and meeting their first look seemed like the least he could do.

Phoenix's voice was so soft he was practically whispering. "Miles? Kristoph knew that?"

He responded just as quietly. _And now it's like trying not to frighten Pescador away. No, it's not like anything - I've never done anything like this before. _"He did."

"Why didn't I?"

There was no answer but history. The look he gave back didn't have a single clear statement to convey - but he hoped it held the weight of years.

It must have, because Wright, in his ratty clothes and his disreputable hat, took on a soft and somber expression. "I loved you too, Miles. I...I'll be back. I have to **think**." He put one hand on the knob, and seemed to realize how his words had sounded, if not how his well-intentioned postscript would sound. "Don't worry."

And, looking somewhat stunned, he left.

_Don't worry. Moron. Idiot. What else am I supposed to do until you come back?_

_If this is poetic justice, I don't like it._

He found himself hoping that the office wasn't quite as empty as it had looked. Gathering up his current paperwork and summoning Pess, he headed for Gavin's office.

The dog tilted his ears toward the door first, but as he got closer he too could hear faint music coming through the door. Not a guitar, which meant a recording, which probably meant Klavier was doing actual work. He knocked.

"Yes, come in!"

The younger man was seated at his desk, resting one foot on an embroidered footstool that went with NOTHING else in the room. His polite look turned into a smile when he saw who had come in.

"May I?" The dog's toenails clicked on the wood. "May we?"

"Of course! Forgive me not answering the door properly."

"For heaven's sake, none of the other prosecutors open their own doors for visitors, and they don't have your excuse. How is your knee, in fact?"

"Ach, much improved at least. Joints are slow to heal."

He frowned sympathetically. "I know. When did you replace your cardboard box with that?"

Klavier grinned. "While Herr Wright was away taking the bar, we spent a day driving around to secondhand stores. Fräulein Trucy wanted a real tuxedo jacket."

"Did she find one?"

The grin got bigger. "Ja, at the second place we went. But the plan was too much fun to give up just because we had found what we came for! Vera ended up with half a wardrobe of vintage dresses. Apollo has a very, ah, dashing silk vest. I found a leather jacket."

"And that."

"It is the right height. I like it."

"You should put up matching curtains, then. With big cabbage roses on them."

Blue eyes lit up. "I SHOULD."

"Your quartet - you take the pursuit of happiness very seriously, don't you?"

"Of course. But not in such a way that I think we should ever need to apologize for. Life is very short."

He meant to nod a response, but his head stayed low after he bowed it. Klavier noticed, of course. "And your own pursuit? How goes it?" The words were flippant, but the voice was gentle and concerned.

"You don't mean to tell me you don't know that Wright has just left the office."

"He did? Not that I wouldn't have eavesdropped, but I had my headphones on!"

"He did. He came to have the conversation that you precipitated with your little joke with the chocolate box." Their only conversations since that had happened had revolved around work or (once) Pescador.

"You think it was a joke?"

"It was ingenious, but yes, I have a distinct feeling of having been played with. Wright also."

"A joke would not be nearly enough motivation for me to spend a day in the dust unpacking every box and drawer in my damned brother's damned office, arguing with Apollo over nothing but nerves and thinking every strange sound was going to be Kris in the doorway." For Klavier, this was very strong language. And when he tilted his chin and glared like that, there was more than a hint of the Kommissar, and he looked almost fearsome.

"No. I suppose not. I'm sorry to hear that you argued."

The young man waved a hand. "It was the setting and the task at hand, nothing serious...and we put an end to it when we realized Kristoph would want us to be fighting."

_Kristoph wanted you to be dead. _The words streaked from his adrenal glands to the root of his tongue, but thankfully traveled no further. It would never be a helpful secret. "Thank you for making the effort, for my sake."

"And you are welcome...but after all of that, what came of it?"

"He knows the whole story."

"It was a revelation?"

"I think it was a shock. And I compounded it."

"You told him?"

"I didn't phrase it well. I said...'Kristoph knew I loved you.'" Klavier leaned forward in his chair barely an inch, but the import of that and of his attentive expression was clear. "Wright's reply was likewise in the past tense."

The blond man considered, and sighed. "You haven't given up because of that, I hope?"

"I..."

"You did phrase it badly, Herr Edgeworth. Even though it is true, I do not tell Apollo that I loved him yesterday."

A strange impulse overtook him. "Klavier. Please - be happy."

The blue eyes looked troubled and kind. "We are. And we try. But you too, Herr Edgeworth. You too."

"I had been wondering if I might occupy a corner of your office until we both go home?"

"Of course." He gestured to the other chair, which for some unknown reason was shoved sideways in front of a bookshelf. "Any time you like."

He glanced after Edgeworth until the latter was settled in the chair and reading a report, then returned to his own files in a sympathetic silence.

A violet-grey evening sank down between the skyscrapers, and at a few minutes past seven Klavier looked at his clock and gathered his work into a battered black case that had been hanging from one arm of his chair. "Is the beautiful automobile still under anesthesia?"

The senior prosecutor surprised himself with a very small smile. "Even I say 'the car is in the shop,' prima donna."

"I would never win at Scrabble if I spoke like that."

"DO you win at Scrabble?"

"No. And how are you intending to get home?"

"Via taxi. I came in with Franziska this morning, but she visits Adrian after work most days now."

"Let me prevail on Apollo to chauffeur you as well as me tonight. Unless you, ah, **object **to Sandra?"

"Not at all. But will he mind?"

"Not this." The young man stood up then, and winced. "Ach, too long at one angle. I should have come to the door after all."

"Just a moment." Edgeworth juggled his own briefcase under one arm and took the dog's leash in that hand, then extended his other arm to Klavier. "Here."

"As though I were your elderly uncle! Maybe I ought to buy a silver-headed cane."

"Not unless you want everyone to call you Prosecutor Wonka. Including me." They made their awkward way out into the hall, with a pause for Klavier to lock his door.

"Would you like to have dinner with us also?"

"I won't impose."

"Are you su- ja, all right, I see you're sure. Don't glare like that. It's terrifying. But do not just go home and brood and tap your fingers on a table and wander between rooms all night, hm?"

"I can't. I have to walk the dog, for one thing."

"I am glad to hear it. Good dog, Pess. I would scratch your ears if we wouldn't all fall in a heap if I tried. Make sure your master gets some air." The dog wagged at the friendly voice. "But Herr Edgeworth, don't give up hope. The next conversation will be better. Or if not that one, the one after that."

"What makes you so sure?" He was younger, young, after all.

"Because even hurts older than that can heal, part after part. Or did it escape your attention that you have just ridden down to the ground floor with me, in the elevator?"

* * *

August 19, 5:35pm

Phoenix barely saw the hallway, the elevator, the sidewalk, or the bus. He heard the soles of his sandals scuffling as he walked, but they might as well have been someone else's.

He was disoriented in time as well as space. Normally, when he thought about it at all, the past felt...well, rigid. Inaccessible. **Past**. But now, as he stumbled home, the last seven years - more like eight? - felt like a tarp draped over his shoulders, like a heavy garment he could throw off if he could only untangle himself from it. Absurd though it was, the feeling that he was just a few wild thrashes away from returning to who he'd been all those years ago was very real and very physical.

The irrationality of it bothered him, but on some level he was all right with it, for as long as it might last. Beyond that heavy tarp was reality, and that knowledge prickled the hairs on his arms the same as would a hint of icy air. In an unworthy way, he was glad that Trucy was still visiting Pearls and Maya up in the mountains for one more day. For someone who performed magic, she could be very hard on one's illusions.

He hadn't intended to go home right away, but he was pulling the front door open before he realized that his feet had taken him along the same overly familiar route from the bus stop that he'd covered probably thousands of times.

_The bus. Pssh. I have a driver's license now. Which will mean something as soon as I have a car._

He blinked, adjusting to the comparative darkness of indoors, and found himself standing at the top of the stairs rather than the bottom. Some part of him was apparently very intent on getting him home.

Polly's eyes met his from the armchair once he opened the door to the semi-lit room.

"And?"

He wasn't ready to put anything into words, not really, but he didn't want to not respond, either.

"Oh, God, Polly, I don't know." He sank onto the couch. "Why was yours so easy?"

Apollo's eyebrows rose at that, though his hard gaze didn't waver. "Who told you it was?"

"Hunh?"

"It may not have been quite the opera yours is, but that doesn't mean it was EASY. Thanks for everything, Kristoph." Maybe it shouldn't have, but hearing it did make him feel a little bit better, and he let out a sigh. And regretted it as Apollo sharpened his look even more and fidgeted with his bracelet and said, "Relieved?"

No point in lying. "A little."

"So what happened?"

"Thanks for everything, Kristoph." Apollo whistled in sympathy. "It is...STRANGE to not be angry at Miles anymore."

"Are you really?"

"Mostly. I think. I was angry for so long that even without it I can feel where it used to be."

"Like when you lose a tooth and mess with the gap."

"Like that."

"So..."

"He told me he loved me back then."

His apprentice got a funny look. "In so many words?"

"No. What he literally said was...that Kristoph knew he did. When they met."

"So what are you doing back here?"

"I LIVE here."

The short attorney made an exasperated noise. "You get a love declaration after practically DECADES and you LEAVE? Are you even TRYING?"

"YES!"

"To do WHAT?"

"I don't know. What did you say about a love declaration?"

He'd expected another quick riposte, but instead was treated to Apollo leaning forward and, from the looks of it, trying to focus his eyes. "You didn't recognize it when you heard it. Did you."

"Who professes their affections in the past tense?"

"Hopelessly awkward people!"

He thought of something. "And me."

"What?"

"I said the same thing back."

"Sir - you had to before, but you've **got **to solve things with him now. You deserve each other. Shall I take you back there when I go get Klavier?"

"Ugh. No, he's probably gone with his sister by now. You enjoy."

Apollo turned red.

* * *

August 19, 7:08pm

He tried calling Edgeworth a few minutes after Apollo left, but got no reply. He tried the man's office a few minutes later than that, with the same result. He threw some leftovers into the microwave for longer than they probably needed to be in there and burned his finger with a droplet of grease when he opened the door.

He ate dinner in front of the television and couldn't remember what he'd watched, even though it took him nearly three hours to eat because he kept losing his train of thought with his fork in midair.

By the time he finished his cold meal it was too late to call, at least probably it was, and he still wasn't sure he'd be able to make as much sense as he wanted to, so he returned to his desk and fished out a notebook, a black one with unlined pages. The apartment was so quiet he could hear cars passing the building.

_It's been a long time since I've written one of these._

* * *

Dear Miles.

I'm not sure if I'm going to send this to you or not.

Well, not SEND it, but leave it somewhere for you to read. Anyhow.

If Polly's wrong about this, I'll...no, I won't do anything to him. I can't keep blaming any of the bunnies for whatever innocence they've managed to retain. It stings to see them - or it has - but it's still nice to know that happiness is possible.

Why did Kristoph know? Why didn't I know? Was it so obvious, and was I really so oblivious? Or were you hard enough to read that only a psychopath could do it? When I look back...the answer seems more like "obvious." Like searchlights across the sky, giant Godzilla monster obvious. Except that the idea that you didn't, you couldn't, was even bigger and more obvious and it loomed there and blocked out the sun. And you didn't tell me.

As much as I'd like to, I can't even just blame Kristoph. We were doing a pretty good job of not being together before he had to do a thing. I didn't tell you either.

Damn him, though, for the years he stole. I don't see how I can ever be that hopeful man again. The world doesn't look the same to me.

I wish I could write a letter like I wrote when we were children and you were in Germany and I thought you were getting them. To babble all over the paper without KNOWING I was babbling all over the paper.

I wish I could say something without doubts rising up around it before the words are even finished.

It's hard to say even like this. I gave up.

I gave up.

That makes it sound easy. Like letting something drop. Like a raincoat. No, it was hard.

And now that makes it hard to say.

I do still care. I've spent so long walling it away somewhere that I wouldn't talk about.

I care.

I loved you.

Thinking of you now.

- Phoenix

* * *

He read it over again, scowling harder and harder as his eyes moved down the page, and dropped the ballpoint pen onto the floor with a frustrated sigh. Thought about throwing the book across the room.

Opened it up to a new blank page instead, fished a pencil out of the drawer, and started to draw.

* * *

August 20, 11:14am

He woke up at his desk late the next morning with a backache, a headache, and the everything-is-screwed-on-too-tight feeling that is the emotional equivalent of a hangover. Apparently Polly had decided to give him the evening to himself. He didn't want to move.

But Trucy would be home soon, and the place was cluttered and gloomy. His **brain **was cluttered and gloomy. He hissed to his feet, pulled all of the blinds open, and started to clean up.

* * *

August 20, 6:16am

He'd come in early. Absurdly early, taking a taxi rather than bother Franziska. The red car couldn't be back soon enough to suit him, but it had been knocked badly out of alignment, and being picky about who fixed it meant that there was no way that it could be rushed.

If Franziska wasn't in yet, there was no way Klavier would be.

It was a little much to be expected to work after yesterday, but apparently the criminals of the city didn't agree. Grateful at least for the distraction, he glanced over the array of documents awaiting his attention, picked the longest one, and after several minutes of staring out of the window at the traffic and the morning's yellow haze, actually began to read it. The only time he lifted his attention from it was when he stepped out to ask the head secretary to send his sister in as soon as she arrived.

* * *

August 20, 11:33am

He managed to immerse himself in the abstract and impersonal pages so thoroughly that he barely kept himself from jumping when Franziska finally walked up to his desk. As soon as he registered her presence, though, the words flew from his mouth. "I need to talk to you."

The next thing he noticed, after speaking, was how purposeful she looked. "Little brother, I need to talk to you as well."

Oh. The Fortress. Moving back from Germany. They were still significant in the back of his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to feel an urgency about them, not yet. "May I please speak to you now?"

She did look as though she wanted to object; the words could almost be read off her face. But after a few seconds of flickering silent argument, she relented. "If you feel you must - then please."

"I may have done something foolish."

"Probably." He looked up into her eyes, and her expression adjusted again, and she sat down in the chair opposite. "I won't hover. What is it?"

"I spoke to Wright yesterday. He came here."

"What did you speak about?"

"Kristoph Gavin, and the abrupt circumstances of my departure from Los Angeles."

"And he needed to be told. Wherein was the foolishness?"

He found himself reaching for one arm with the other, his old nervous habit. "I...may have communicated that I...my affections."

"You **may **have?"

"Without any grace at all. And not without the possibility of misinterpretation."

She sighed and leaned sideways. "Foolishness indeed, then. That is not the sort of statement to be made ambiguously. If I had dithered at Adrian we could have both dithered on until we were old ladies in crocheted shawls."

"I realize." He felt certain that his sister **had **gone through a stage of poor communication and loaded gestures, honestly, but there was no point to arguing about it.

"You will have to try again. I won't permit you not to."

"He left very shortly thereafter. Not before announcing his intention to return after he'd had an opportunity to organize his thoughts - but I don't know at this moment whether to dread his reappearance."

"You **will **have the opportunity to speak for yourself, when he does come back."

"Pardon?"

"You describe it so **passively**. If you cannot bear the thought of a particular result, then act in such a way as to bring about a different result. I should not have to be telling you anything so simple."

He blinked several times. "You're...correct, of course. Thank you."

"You are welcome. And this is Wright we are talking about. Whatever he may be doing at the moment, I assure you that he is **not **organizing his thoughts." She stood up again and went over to the dog's bed. "...At least Pescador has an orderly mind."

"He has a one-track mind. He'd like a walk."

"Not yet. I haven't had my chance to speak to **you**."

"No, you haven't. I beg your pardon."

After being given this implied permission, however, she remained silent and stroked Pess's ears. He waited, and seemingly, so did she.

"Franziska?"

She paused a little longer, then inhaled and spoke. "As soon as you arrived in Germany, I knew you needed to go back. But you were right to decide that Gavin's price for your doing so was too high. You could not have sacrificed Miss Fey, nor could you have sacrificed the public trust by allowing the villains you convicted to walk free."

"Thank you - for the positive assessment of my character."

His sister disregarded that. "If you were to return, some part of his equation needed to be disrupted."

She looked like a schoolgirl, reciting a basic and long-familiar lesson. Her tone of voice was almost the same as it had been when she had been an adolescent, reciting Manfred's lessons at the end of the day. But this was not a speech he'd ever heard before.

"Moving to protect everyone he might have endangered wasn't feasible. And I'm afraid I decided against having him killed or doing it myself."

He got a chill. "You even thought about it?"

"I'm sure YOU did."

It was true. He dropped his gaze in acknowledgement, and she continued.

"Likewise, replacing the Bar Association board was too problematic. There was no guarantee he wouldn't be able to manipulate new members as easily as he did the old ones, nor any way to be sure that he couldn't continue to direct the activities of a group he no longer officially belonged to.

"To rely on a metaphor, it wasn't possible to remove the prey, or the hunter, or the weapon. And since we are agreed that the justice system does serve a valuable purpose, the solution was not to remove the forest."

"Are there acorns somewhere in your metaphor?"

"Don't be silly. No acorns. But it took me longer than it ought to have to realize what could be removed. And even once I knew what it was...it was a terribly slow process. So slow that Kristoph removed himself by other means before it could be finished, and there was no need to delay our return...but it was close, little brother. And unlike the other options, it was something that…needed to be done anyway."

"What was it?" He was having a hard time understanding her, distracted as he was and as uncharacteristically vague as she was being.

"Your vulnerability to the weapon. Miles Edgeworth, you aren't so terrible as you believed you were." And with that she threw her arms around him and, very uncharacteristically, started to cry.

"Franziska, what -" He hugged her in return, a little awkwardly but with honest concern. In response she fidgeted her cellular phone open with one hand, called up some kind of document, and handed it to him before resuming the other half of the embrace. He had to look over her shoulder to see what was glowing in his hand. A long, long string of four-character codes, two letters, then a dash, then a number, followed by dates.

"These are...this is my entire caseload. Isn't it? Or up to a point. Everything from the beginning of my career up to Mia Fey's murder. What were you -"

"**Everything**." Her voice wobbled. "If there was proof that each and every one of these verdicts was appropriate, or reached without any kind of malfeasance on your part, then the board would have no grounds on which to disbar you. For Miles Edgeworth to be safe...we had to remove the Demon Prosecutor."

"You didn't - you didn't **falsify**- "

A fierce slap stung the left side of his face. "Of course not! We were PROVING your innocence, not inventing it."

"But you can't possibly be saying that I didn't come by that name through my own actions."

"You were...you were cruel. Icy. Arrogant. Sly. But not a predator. It is not a record to celebrate, but it isn't monstrous either."

"How would it even have been possible for you to prove that I hadn't done anything worth taking my badge away for? In some of these cases, honestly, if you know I was in the clear, you know more than I do."

"Come into my office, and you can have your explanation."

He glanced at his desk clock as he stood, and she saw him do it. "It is nearly noon, yes. And I **have **just arrived. I had someone to pick up at the airport." Pess followed them through the door, and the dog's nails made an interesting counterpoint to her high heels. If anyone in the bullpen noticed her streaky face, they were wise enough not to comment.

The first thing he noticed in Franziska's tidy office – the first thing that anyone would have noticed - was Detective Gumshoe. Not that that was strange; the man was standing in the center of the floor and beaming.

"It's over, sir!" He sounded gratified and almost incredulous. And energetic, even though he must have been waiting there for some time.

"Detective?" But the big man didn't respond, at least not verbally. He simply stepped back to reveal the third person in the room: a smiling young woman with black hair up in a ponytail. And as she flung herself at Edgeworth with a huge grin, all the stunned prosecutor could say was, "KAY FARADAY?"

She mimicked his tone. "Miles Edgeworth?"

"It's wonderful to see you, it's been much too long!" Too long indeed; his work with her seemed as though it had been part of another life.

"You're so right!" She had the gall to ruffle his hair before she let go.

"What have you been doing?"

"What have **we **been doing." Franziska stood in front of her desk, a triumphant, perhaps even mischievous, smile breaking through her overwrought expression and warming the shine in her eyes. "I couldn't clear your name alone. Legal expertise is one thing - but I no longer had access to all of the records here, nor an acceptable excuse to request so many."

Gumshoe broke in. "But **I **did, sir. And if there were any black marks on your record, the police department was complicit too. After all, we round up the suspects and identify the cases...so some housecleaning was in order. Clearly. Sir."

Franziska spoke again. "But there remained information that had to be obtained through-"

Kay actually giggled then, and spoke over her. "-UNOFFICIAL channels. Which is why your sister contacted me. There's really nothing like a brilliant master thief, is there, when you're doing a little quiet research." She stared at him, bright and challenging.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "You'll have to tell me EVERYTHING. But let me ask, first, what the estate being sold had to do with it?"

"You may not have been corrupt, little brother, but you were ruthless. Some of the sentences that were handed down were as harsh as they could possibly have been. Where they seemed, perhaps, disproportionate, compared to how similar cases elsewhere were handled...we tried to provide some anonymous recompense to the people involved and their families. Investments and such."

It was starting to seem real. "And you examined every single **one**?"

"All of **yours**. Next...after a bit of rest for everyone...are mine. I take responsibility for my decisions, but Papa has much to answer for, in terms of the course of study he chose to provide. I am only glad I was able to - complete my education elsewhere." _Lingering business. I see._

It was difficult to speak, and he wanted to sit down. He felt like an actor. "Franziska...what you've done...what all three of you have done...is tremendous. I can't express my gratitude in words of the right scale. But any assistance that you need, or want, with the remaining investigations, I absolutely will provide. Anything. Just tell me what."

She smiled. "I will. But we've gotten very good at this ourselves. After all..." And Kay and Gumshoe smiled like their faces would crack when she looked him straight in the eye and switched languages. "…imouto to meitantei to kaitou wa...Yatagarasu desu."

August 20, 2:52pm

The agency wasn't pristine, but then, it never was, and he had at least restored a semblance of cleanliness and order to it before setting off on foot to the grocery store to bring back a few of Trucy's favorites.

_And once I have a car, I can start making these trips to the GOOD grocery store._ The sun was uncomfortably warm now that he was carrying the lopsided bags, but the little distractions of having to adjust them and noticing beads of sweat start at the back of his neck kept his mind occupied. _Think about Trucy now. Miles later._

The bag with the cans and bottles gave an alarming lurch and ripped down one side just as he came up on the building, and so between getting through the bottom door and getting up the stairs without having it dump itself out completely and getting through the top door, he was on the verge of a therapeutic burst of profanity.

And when he let the bags slither to the floor not a moment too soon, he was very glad that he hadn't indulged, because Trucy and Apollo were standing by the couch under a big handmade blue banner reading CONGRATULATIONS, ACE ATTORNEY! and smiling broadly, and as he blinked - she hadn't been due back for another forty-five minutes and he had checked his watch, he was sure of it - a pair of blue paper airplanes soared across the room in opposite directions, scattering iridescent confetti.

His first thought was that they'd been looking in his sketchbook, or something, and were responding to what had happened with Miles. Which was a bit weird and premature if not un-bunny-like.

And then he saw the envelope that Trucy was waving. A big white one, kind of like his college acceptance letters had come in, except that when he took it from her outstretched hand (on the second try, because she was jumping up and down) the printing on it read California Bar Association.

"CONGRATULATIONS, Daddy, congratulations, oh, I knew it, this is such a great SURPRISE, why didn't you call me **yesterday**?!"

"Yesterday?"

She gave him an odd look. "Yes, YESTERDAY AFTERNOON when you could have looked up whether you passed on the computer. I was so nervous, too, I thought you'd call and then you didn't and I couldn't tell whether it was because you were WAITING to tell me or because you didn't WANT to tell me..." She had to stop to breathe at that point.

He shot Apollo a why-didn't-you-tell-me look, and got after-that?-don't-be-dumb in reply.

"Honestly, honey? Yesterday was just...**distracting**. And I'd forgotten about the electronic results, anyway...But I'm a **lawyer **again?"

"You're unbelievable."

Apollo spoke up then. "You know the mailman didn't bring this, right? Truce caught an earlier train and we checked the results at the library and then went to the Bar Association offices to get it for you."

"I, uh...thanks. When did you make the banner?"

Trucy rejoined the conversation. "Oh, months ago. I had it in my room behind the dresser. We would have needed it EVENTUALLY."

He'd been slitting the envelope open with a thumbnail as she spoke, and his focus shifted to the contents. A formal letter of congratulations, the wording of which he could almost have sworn he remembered. A couple of forms to be filled out and sent back promptly, though not at this exact second, thanks. A green piece of paper detailing the oath he'd have to take and telling him there'd be a different pink piece of paper saying where he could go take the oath and **get** his badge, according to his ZIP code. No piece of pink paper, which was disproportionately frightening. But a handwritten note on a much smaller sheet telling him, Phoenix Wright, specifically, where he could go for his.

"Defense attorneys take the oath at the Prosecutors' Office now? Isn't that weird?"

Apollo looked amused. "Defense attorneys, plural, regular, don't. YOU do. I took mine at City Hall."

Oh.

"Should I arrange your embarrassing celebratory dinner for tomorrow? I think it's too late for Maya and Pearl to catch a train down today. I can make all the calls."

"Would you? Actually?"

The shorter man smirked. "Sure thing. But you've got something else to do before then. Get in the car."

"What?"

"I can call from my cell outside the store. Come on, Truce, drag him if you need to."

"The STORE?"

"And after that, the barber's."

August 20, 3:44pm

As he stood in the mirrored dressing room in what would be a very handsome new blue suit, once it was altered, he overheard the two clerks talking outside. They obviously thought they were whispering.

"What do you think about this one?"

"I was WONDERING! He looks so - SEEDY!"

"With the beard stubble and the hat? I know! It's terrible of me to say, but you think maybe...um…you know how defense lawyers will buy suits for their clients, to make them look more respectable?"

"Oh my God, do you THINK?"

He exploded with years of pent-up mirth, in front of his own bewildering reflection, and didn't care if they knew he'd heard or if they knew why he was laughing.


	11. At Last

August 20, 4:01pm

He opted for while-you-wait alteration on one of the suits for a couple of reasons. So he could wear it to the next day's dinner, first of all. _I'll be looking good. I hope._

Second of all, so he could keep making the clerks nervous, because that was fun. He wondered if he could get them, without saying anything, to decide out loud what they thought he was going on trial for. (The seamstress, on the other hand, had been **completely **unintimidated, looking up from her pincushion and tape measure only to say "hm," at him, like she'd seen his type before and he wasn't as clever as he thought he was.)

And thirdly so he could have some time to think. _A lawyer again. God. Getting it. Getting it __**back**__. The courtroom's going to be...that place I'm __**supposed**__ to be. Where people __**want **__me to be. And not that place I was thrown out of._

I'll be on the front lines again.

What was Trucy's word? **Unbelievable**.

He had the odd impulse to make a stop at the judge's office, to get the old man's acknowledgement. On the other hand, they'd never been familiar, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to know, entirely, what the office really looked like. In his mind it was part posh, well-organized workplace, part overstuffed antique store, and part Salvador Dalí. Terrifying if he turned out to be right, disappointing otherwise.

He twitched his fingers, as if he were rolling a pencil, and wished he'd brought his sketchbook along. Part of him wanted to duck out the rear of the store, hail a cab, and just get to the Prosecutor's Office as fast as possible...and another part, the one that understood waiting but had generally been concerned with darker things for the last several years, told him just a little longer wouldn't hurt. Not to stall. Not to hedge. Just to do it properly.

He let the muscles in his chest and shoulders relax, and slumped in the slippery chair. The cool air of the store felt, for some reason, perfect - and then there was the seamstress with his new suit in a bag on a hanger, and he was paying and leaving and squinting at the glitter of the sun on the sidewalk and getting a knowing grin and a thumbs-up from Apollo. Going back in to retrieve Trucy from in front of a display of bow ties. Getting into the car (passenger seat). Happy.

* * *

August 20, 4:56pm

When he sat in front of the mirror, the barber said "Where you coming back from?"

"Beg pardon?"

The man in the white jacket replied over his shoulder as he lined up scissors and comb and razor on the cart between the chairs. "You're returning to civilization, man? I'm just wondering where from. Peace Corps? My son did that for a few years, said it was the first real good thing he ever did."

"Ah, sorry. Afraid not."

"Prison? I'm kidding, I know how those guys look. You're not one of 'em. Some crazy-ass commune in the desert?"

"That sounds like more fun than what I did."

"Ha! You know, you're right about that. I've had years I coulda spent stoned in the cactus, been better for everybody." Phoenix laughed. "How you want it?"

"The stubble, gone. The hair - well, as soon as you get it short enough, you'll see what it has in mind. There's not much point to trying to talk it into anything else."

"Just full of surprises, huh?" A cape was fastened around his shoulders.

"That's me."

The man started to whistle, and got to work.

Some time later - twenty minutes? an hour? - he was summoned from a dreamlike succession of memories of the courtroom by the barber saying "You weren't kidding, were you!" and spinning the chair back around.

For the first time in years, he saw himself when he looked into a mirror. _Nice and spiky...just how I like it._He gave his reflection a goofy grin that to his surprise turned honest.

"How's that? Is the man back?"

"More than you KNOW." He shook the barber's hand, overtipped him, and strode through the door - or rather, TO the door. Upon seeing Polly and Trucy perched on the slatted bench outside, he switched to a tiptoe for his approach.

"What do you think?" They both jumped, Polly looking like he was seeing a somewhat gratifying ghost and Trucy just plain enthusiastic.

"You look awesome! Like a superhero!" She pulled out her phone and snapped his picture, as she had when he'd come out of the dressing room each time to show off a promising suit.

_Not quite what I think I was going for, but okay._

"Will you come to my show tonight? Please?" She interrupted their progress towards Sandra to tug on his sleeve. It had actually been months since he'd come to the Wonder Bar to do more than walk her home, now that he thought about it.

"Sure, sweetheart. Do I have to wear the suit?"

"Nah, you can be incognito for one more day. 'Cause incognito's a cool word."

He looked over at their driver. "Polly, you coming?"

"Hey, tonight I'm being your social secretary. I need to try again to reach some of the people who weren't home. And did you want me to call your friend Mr. Butz? I mean, I don't think he'll be able to make it down at such short notice, but he might appreciate getting the news."

_Bar, car, that's it so far._"Let me tell him...unless you're so proud of me that you don't think you can restrain yourself?"

"I'll keep a lid on it somehow."

"You're never going to get your name on the door if you don't overcome this juvenile tendency towards sarcasm."

"Are you kidding me? From what I've seen of lawyers, it's practically a requirement. Ranked somewhere above literacy." The car stopped. "Out."

"This is a strip mall, Apollo, and we don't actually live here."

"We forgot shoes. Unless you were planning to wear that suit to court with your sandals and basically continue to accessorize like a freak."

"Of course not. Who do you think I am, a prosecutor?"

* * *

August 20, 8:37pm

Trucy'd been adding new illusions to her show, and he felt a little guilty for not having seen some of them before, especially since some of the people in the audience already knew them, cheering when she announced certain names or reached for certain props. The paper airplanes out of nowhere appeared in a different context, changing course and flying from table to table as she got people to call out the names of different cities. She plugged in an assortment of desk lamps and table lamps, turned them all on, and then started to move them around - but the shadows they cast in their original configuration didn't move. And, near the end of the show, she went from table to table and performed what sounded like a different trick at each one, up close and with seemingly no way to hide what she was doing.

When she got to his, which he was sharing with a young professional couple and a trio of college students, she didn't give him more acknowledgement than a smile before asking if anyone had any photographs in their wallets that she could borrow for just a moment. One of the students squealed in excitement, a repeat visitor from the sound of it, and dove for her messenger bag. As she rummaged, finally coming up with a group shot of five or six people in novelty sombreros, one of the young professionals handed over a wallet photo of the other one in a suit, the sort of thing that could go in a company directory or a press release, and somebody else contributed a picture of a corgi and two pairs of legs, on a background of grass. He went into his wallet for an old snapshot of Maya outside Global Studios.

Once she had all of the pictures, she stacked them up, then fanned them out and started changing the order they were in like a card dealer doing a trick shuffle (though she was careful not to bend them) or a Spanish dancer opening and closing a fan. After several seconds of this, she stopped and held the pictures out - and he gasped with everyone else when he saw the pictures interact. The corgi ran past Maya, then past the group of partiers. The suit-wearer adjusted a new sombrero. The legs moved aside, making room for a third set in Kurain robes and sandals. And then she gathered them all back into a stack with a loud SNAP, and returned them unaltered to their owners, with a bow. He clapped loudly, though by no means was he the loudest person in the room, when she returned to the stage for the finale.

They talked a little on the way home. "You're amazing, sweetheart. I should come to these more often."

"You wouldn't be so amazed if you weren't seeing all of the new stuff at once."

"I bet I would."

"Plus you're my dad."

"Even then!"

She got serious. "I'm going to finish school, don't get me wrong. But I want to go learn how to do this the right way afterwards, you know?"

"The right way? You're the best magician I've ever seen."

"I'm a Gramarye. That comes with being able to do some things other people can't. But most of the REALLY good magicians? They didn't have that, they were just some guys who learned how to do magic WITHOUT it. I want to learn like a normal person would learn. Not taking shortcuts."

"Like an apprenticeship?"

"Maybe."

_One of these days, she's going to be grown up. _He considered the idea. "So long as you study something else besides magic, too...it's okay with me. We'll talk more about it later." She put her arm through his, so it must have been the right answer. "But are you sure you don't want to go to law school?"

"You're crazy. And so is everyone else you know."

"Objection!"

"You've got to work on your volume if that's the best you can do. Get Polly to help you."

When they arrived home, there was a note in Polly's handwriting on the table:

_- Dinner set. 7:30 tomorrow at the GOOD French place near the Music Center. No one will push you into the fountain._

_- Taking Vera home now. Then K's place._

_- Come take your oath tomorrow at the Prosecutor's Office. 3:00pm. Teasing rights forever if you're late. Yes, it IS a Saturday. Glad you noticed._

He flicked the television on and found a classic David Suchet Poirot episode just starting, which brought Trucy piling onto the couch because she loved the intro theme with the saxophone so much. Barely twenty minutes later, though, she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, and he sent her off to bed. She went with a minimum of complaint.

That left him alone in the room, and as much as he'd always enjoyed this series when he could catch it, it just wasn't holding his interest on this particular night.

So he picked up his sketchbook from under Polly's note, then remembered that he hadn't **left** it under Polly's note. Well, of course not, no, but he hadn't left it **here**. He almost yelled and woke Trucy when he flipped straight to the newest drawings and saw what had been added to those pages.

First a sticky note, in Vera's loopy cursive. _I'm very sorry, Mr. Wright, but I won't ever do it again._

He'd been drawing Miles, of course, as he remembered him from different times. Chunks of time easily differentiated, given their history. But these drawings now shared space with a second set, a set he had to admit was quite a bit better even if he wasn't ashamed of his own work. And Vera had to have had Trucy's help in finding source materials, because, of course, these drawings were of him.

There was Miles in fourth grade, with his bangs falling in his face and his knobbly knees and that ridiculous bow tie. And there was fourth-grade Nicky in a printed t-shirt, looking childishly worried.

Then a dark, scratchy image of Edgeworth in his Demon Prosecutor days. He'd been working mostly from memories of old newspaper photos himself for this one, so some of the details were indistinct, but he was sure he'd captured the jawline, the ornate jacket, the arrogant disinterest of the eyes. Vera's addition was outright painful, because there on the other side of the page was the boy who'd been absolutely stupid in love with Dahlia Hawthorne, ugly sweater and earnest, **dimwitted **gaze and all. The look wasn't a smile, wasn't a stare, wasn't contemplative - it was that vacant space between thoughts and between coherent emotions in which nobody looks very clever, and it was such an apt summation of those times that he wondered whether Vera didn't understand other people quite a bit more shrewdly than he'd thought she had.

When he considered the joint portrait, on the other hand, what came to mind out of context was Goldilocks. This one's too hard, and **this** one's too soft. _Which leaves who for "just right"? Larry? _Well, at that point, probably so. _Maybe February wasn't the first time he's been the smart one.  
_  
He turned the page and felt a bit better, because this had been his favorite of the sketches. This was Miles as he had been during the (shockingly brief, really) space of time during which they'd faced off periodically in court. He was making one of those facetious bows, eyes demurely lowered but lips grinning a delighted, triumphant grin. This was usually right about when someone had connived their way straight into one of his verbal traps. And it was one devastating look, if you already happened to find him attractive.

Vera had added a picture of Phoenix objecting, of course, eyes fierce and one arm outstretched. He didn't look half as suave, maybe, but it was a compelling pose if he did say so himself, and seeing the image kind of made him want to try it out again.

What the hell. Trucy was in bed. He stood in front of the darkened window, looking at his reflection, and pointed. Hard. And nearly woke her a second time laughing.

The last of his drawings had been laid down in the lightest lines, and showed Miles as he was now, face a bit softer and those wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He was pictured from the waist up, behind the barest suggestion of a table or a desk, looking down and reading something.

Vera had outdone herself. The first of her two sketches here was him as, well, the bum Larry had so accurately labelled. Unshaven, in saggy clothes, hat pulled down low. Except for the sideways look the figure was giving, he was shown from the back. But the drawing was partial, having been roughly erased to make room for something newer. An image of him looking straight ahead, with one corner of his mouth quirked up, showing his current age in the deeper-set eyes and the wear on the smile...but with his hair spiked and a suit. Not a suit. THAT suit. Trucy and her cell phone.

Those clever, clever rabbits.

* * *

August 21, 2:33pm

The next day was bright and windy. And dry, as he discovered when he emerged from the agency's front door in his new suit, with his new old haircut, new shoes still squeaking around his feet. It was a little early in the year for the Santa Anas, wasn't it?

Oh well. The sidewalk trees tossed their branches as though they were shrugging, and the street was filled with the rustle of tumbling leaves and paper. It felt anticipatory, somehow.

_Though I guess I'm not arrogant enough to think the weather is on my side._

Apollo clattered down the stairs, keys jingling, with Trucy right behind. "Ready to go?"

"I guess so."

"Jeez, you could sound a little more enthusiastic."

"I'm excited. It's...too big to get words around." He expected Apollo to tease him for the awkward metaphor, but the younger man just ducked his head in acknowledgement.

"By the way, though, boss, when were you thinking of getting your own car?"

"Honestly, Apollo, one thing at a time."

* * *

August 21, 2:52pm

The Prosecutor's Office was never a boisterous place, but the quiet in the halls was still strange to experience. Doors were closed, yellow afternoon sunlight streamed into otherwise shadowy corners, and altogether he was reminded of sneaking into his junior high school with Larry during the summer, with everything smelling of harsh soap and old paper. The ding of the elevator's arrival on the twelfth floor was ridiculously loud.

Miles had the office at the end of the hall - but Apollo headed towards a doorway considerably closer to the elevator than that.

He hissed at Apollo in thoughtless agitation. "Where are you going? I'm not having KLAVIER administer the oath!"

The answer was a mutter. "Don't be a baby. And of course you're not; he's not the DA or the deputy. Yet." Apollo knocked perfunctorily, opened the door, and led the way in.

"Then who IS administering it?"

"Surprise," said Apollo, "I am."

"WHAT?" He followed Apollo into the room in a nervous rush, hoping to see someone who looked more like an authority figure. But the only person inside was Klavier, dressed for the occasion in a button-down shirt. And not hiding his smirk well enough.

"That's right, me."

"Since when are YOU the DA? Or a judge?"

"Never, but I AM a notary."

"A notary public."

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Since a little after it seemed like you really were going to take the bar. Trucy's idea."

He tried to glare at his daughter, but she was grinning so hard that he couldn't.

"So why did we have to do this here?"

Klavier interrupted, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "Because I have something that belongs to you, for the first thing." He slid a small white box across his desk to Phoenix. Phoenix raised his eyebrows at him, unamused. "I am perfectly in earnest, Herr Wright. Unlike the chocolate, this is nothing but what it purports to be."

He took the box then, removing the lid carefully. It contained a defense attorney's badge. When he lifted it out, the weight and the shape of it were familiar in his hand.

Terribly familiar. The edges seemed a bit worn down, with the faint nicks and lines acquired by any metal object accustomed to use. He looked at the three faces, almost incredulous, almost challenging them, and turned it over: 26381. He swallowed. "Where did you find it?"

Klavier looked at Apollo, but Apollo didn't say anything, so the blond answered after a second. "That was in my brother's desk. We found it when we were looking for his appointment books."

Apollo chimed in then. "You could have had a new one, but...this seemed better."

He lost his voice and found it again. "I feel like I should be handing it to YOU, and YOU should be looking at ME funny."

Apollo tried not to smile too hard. "Yeah. Mr. Edgeworth mentioned that."

"Hey, I was - I was proud of this thing." He looked down at it again, and Trucy bounced forward to attach it to his lapel.

"**WAIT!**" In the mostly empty building, Apollo's loud voice seemed even louder. "You can do that in just a minute. Oath first."

"Shouldn't...are we the only ones here?" Apollo ignored the question he hadn't quite asked.

"Repeat after me."

_I solemnly swear...that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability._

He'd said those exact words before, in a much larger room with a much less varied set of emotions in his heart. But Trucy kissed him on the cheek after she pinned his badge on, and Apollo shook his hand before signing off on the necessary forms.

He thought about it, then extended a hand to the office's primary occupant, who shook it quite sincerely after an instant of surprise.

"So is it all over?" That was Apollo's voice, and he understood the words - but not the inquiry. He turned towards his apprentice (how was that going to work now?) and gave him a questioning look. "You're a lawyer again."

"I don't think I feel like it's all over...I feel like it's beginning."

Trucy clapped her hands together like someone winning a bet, and he didn't understand that either. But Apollo continued. "He's down the hall. Go on...and don't cry unless you REALLY need to."

His eyes widened, and he nearly repeated Mia's old phrase aloud, but then, they all seemed to know it.

And Klavier had to change the tone by saying, "...and don't slip on the stairs."

* * *

Edgeworth's door was open partway, and for the space of one breath he hesitated outside.

"Come in."

He did, and when he reached the spot of floor in front of the desk, feeling proud and self-conscious at once, Miles just smiled, a dazzling lightning bolt of a smile that put Klavier's to shame. "You came back."

"I always...we always do."

He wasn't sure from the response if his statement was being ignored. "Very elegant. But I should be prosecuting again very soon. I won't go easy on you."

"When did you ever? Bring it, gorgeous." He was flirting, seriously, frivolously, in between, hoping for a reaction. But Edgeworth was nervous, looking sideways. He was dressed the way he had been in Sonoma, shirt and vest but no jacket.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Tea?"

"I don't have anything else to toast with."

"You mean you never kept a bottle of scotch in the bottom of your desk? My illusions are ruined. And yes, please; I'd love some."

Edgeworth went over to the tea things and took long enough to prepare two cups that Phoenix couldn't tell if he was being meticulous or stalling. Probably both.

He accepted the cup and saucer carefully when his old friend returned, taking a sip and then raising his eyebrows at the temperature before putting it down and watching the steam rise.

"It's hot."

"I realized."

Again he couldn't tell if the silver-haired man was reluctant or just waiting for the tea to cool. They sat in silence, not an uncomfortable one, for a minute or two before Edgeworth raised his cup into the air.

"To your return to the courts."

His heart swelled at that, but he drank without speaking.

"And to my sister Franziska. Though this isn't the moment to explain it."

He drank again, then proposed a toast of his own. "To Mia Fey."

"Hear." It was so easy to imagine her in the room, for a moment, leaning against the shelves with her hair hanging down, watching and smiling.

"And to Serra Magnet Elementary School, for putting you and me and Larry all in the same class."

Edgeworth looked taken aback, if softly. "That **was **lucky, wasn't it."

"Thank the L.A. schools for something."

"...and cheers to the Flopsy Bunnies."

"I didn't even tell you about the last thing they pulled, did I." Or maybe second-to-last. Third-to-last. Sketchbook badge notary. Good grief. He drained his cup. "The tea IS good."

"I'm picky." Phoenix laughed at the understatement, and had to rewind Edgeworth's next words in his brain to really register them, especially as they were prefaced by a sigh. "...so what do we do now?"

"What do we do about what? About the tea?" He knew that he was this close to being told not to play dumb, and saw the other man bite the impulse back. Watched him stand up and go over to the window, silhouetting himself in front of it.

"Wright." This time he bit back his own impulse to tell the prosecutor to hurry up. "Are you content...to go on as we have been? At this...orbit?"

"Showing up for periodic rescues and then disappearing off again? I swear, we should have had medic alert bracelets with each other's names on them made up." The question still hadn't been answered, and he stared at the buttons on his cuffs. "No. I guess I'm not."

"Take a walk with me. Leave your jacket; you'll overheat." Edgeworth led the way to the stairs, and he followed. There was no sign of anyone else in the hall, when turned around to look.

If the building had been quiet, the stairwell was a museum. He felt compelled to speak, and the other man seemed to feel the same way. "Klavier told me not to fall down these."

"He knew you'd be taking them."

"You told them?"

"No." Their footfalls echoed, scuffs becoming a waterfall of whispers in the vertical space.

"Where's the dog?"

"Pess is at home in the yard today. Barking at the neighbors' Lab, probably."

"Pess barks?"

"Not to excess. The neighbors' dog is a remarkably witless creature. I've been tempted to bark at him myself."

"I can't imagine." Scuff.

"I think I have a new bunny for you."

"ANOTHER one? Tell me you're joking. Four is hard enough."

"Did I ever tell you about Kay Faraday?"

"Maybe just a little. The name sounds familiar, but that's about it."

"She's back in the area and she wants to go to law school."

"Prosecution or defense?"

"You know, I didn't ask."

"But you think she has potential."

"As a lawyer, oh yes. And as a bunny, also yes. Though I think she has a year on Klavier."

"Where is she staying now?"

"With Miss Andrews. But I thought she might make a good roommate for Vera."

"Well, introduce them."

"I believe she'll be at dinner tonight - Apollo called me yesterday. But I wanted to warn you."

"Why is she with Adrian now, anyway?"

"Of course, you don't know the story yet. She was, actually, one of the two other people Franziska has been working with secretly since I - since I left."

He processed this information. "Which would make the other-"

"The indispensable Detective Richard Gumshoe. In fact." Phoenix's words failed him, and his mouth was still hanging open as they emerged from the stairwell and then pushed through another door to the tiny park between the city buildings. The winds were blowing, and Edgeworth slowed and stretched his arms out. "I always loved this weather."

"You love the Santa Anas? Nobody likes them. They mean fires and nosebleeds."

"I do. They're warm. Everything feels...vibrant. You can feel the air between your fingers." He splayed his hands out, and Phoenix copied the gesture. It was true. The hot wind slid through his hands.

Edgeworth turned up one of the footpaths. They'd been keeping apace so far, but now Phoenix was falling behind.

"Miles."

"What."

The words sounded plaintive, desperate, he couldn't help it. "Does being smarter make up for being older?"

Edgeworth paused by a tree and looked back at him through his glasses. The philosophical turn didn't seem to surprise him. "Being young didn't make up for being wrong. So, yes...I think so."

"I told you that I loved you."

Miles didn't move an inch, but the tension in his pose was suddenly clear. "And I said the same."

"Miles...I've MISSED you longer than I've KNOWN you." He'd come a little closer, so the tree was framed between them now.

And Miles stepped forward, and reached his arms around his back and pressed his hands into the crisp white shirt, and kissed him.

If anything could change the past, that embrace could. All of the past selves Vera had drawn, the boy, the college kid, the young man, the bum - in that moment all of them were retrieved from their abandonment. And he knew without being told, finally, that all of them - even the idiot in the pink sweater - had been loved.

And if anything was going to change the future even more than the badge, than his mad semifamily of bunnies, it was this kiss, and the one who loved him now.

* * *

September 1, 8:57am

"Good old failbox."

The mailbox outside the Lake Monster studio was still tilted to one side, although it wasn't the SAME side. Larry, clambering out of the Volvo, noticed a large manila envelope sticking out of the corner. It was too early for an absentee ballot, too early for the catalog proofs for his upcoming show - which meant there was only one thing it could be. "Hey, **mysterious**."

He retrieved it, and focused his attention when he saw that the return address was the Wright Anything Agency. Forget waiting to take this inside; he opened it leaning against the hood of the car.

It contained a letter and another manila envelope.

The letter read,

_Dear Larry,_

_Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth regret that they will be unable to accept your invitation for the Thanksgiving weekend._

"Oh, no no no, no no no no no. Tell me you guys didn't screw it up. Don't MAKE me get on a plane and come down there."

_This has been a remarkable year, although it obviously has not yet concluded, and the aforementioned attorneys -_

"Wait wait, plural as in more than one attorney? Nick, man, you did it!"

_- the aforementioned attorneys find themselves with a list of persons deserving of thanks that is so long, and so urgent, that they are unable to be away from Los Angeles at that particular time._

_Should you, your fiancée, and/or the bartender Nina wish to travel to Los Angeles in November, however, your presence would be more than welcome._

_In regards to our earlier challenge, please see the enclosed._

_Sincerely and gratefully,_

_Miles Edgeworth_  
_Phoenix Wright_

The second envelope felt like it contained a jumble of things, so he did finally let himself inside, and upended it over one of the counters.

Papers slithered and paper clips jingled, and the first sheet he retrieved was neatly labelled E2 in the upper right corner. The handwriting on the pink stationery, however, was Maya Fey's. And the note detailed the visit of one Prosecutor Edgeworth to Kurain, for the purpose of speaking to the channeled spirit of one Mr. Gregory Edgeworth.

If this was E2, where was E1?

E1 was a billing record from the office of a Doctor Crow, with line items for an ongoing series of individual psychotherapy sessions and the prescription of an antidepressant. Apparently Crow was both a psychologist and a psychiatrist, which meant he was something of a treasure.

E3 was not immediately apparent, but W1 sat next on the stack. A Xerox of a California driver's license issued to one Phoenix Wright, who looked a bit embarrassed in his official photograph.

And then W2, a copy of the letter affirming that Phoenix Wright had passed the state bar exam.

"Woohoo!"

Then a pile of supplemental materials. A scan of a dog license from the County of Los Angeles. An LAPD internal newsletter announcing recent promotions, with "Ema Skye, forensic investigator" highlighted. A couple issues of the Ivy University student paper. A disc labelled Mock Trial, and another just labelled with a capital G. A photo of a smiling pair of young men Larry didn't recognize - at least not personally; he was momentarily stunned to realize that the tall blond one was Klavier Gavin, which might explain the second disc. A typed list of case numbers, otherwise unlabelled. Receipts from a mechanic, a barbershop, and a menswear emporium. A ribbon that smelled of chocolate. And a color copy of a beautiful pastel drawing of a fountain, the spray of the water almost, but not entirely, obscuring two figures on a park bench in the background.

He'd have to ask about this stuff.

When he'd sorted through all of that, the only thing remaining on the counter was a photograph, face down. This wasn't a Xerox. And he paused, fingers outstretched, when he saw E3, W3 written neatly on the back.

He flipped it over.

He couldn't tell where it had been taken, but it didn't matter. Miles stood in front, jacket off, relaxed, smiling as Larry had never seen him smile. And Nick had his arms around his waist and his chin on his shoulder, looking not just happy, but exhilarated.

If Larry's shoulders shook for a minute, or if any visitor to the studio would have heard sniffling sounds over a laugh, it wouldn't have been because he was a complete romantic or anything. Of course not.

The necessary few minutes later, he grabbed a sheet of unlined paper and a soft pencil and composed a reply.

_Dear Nick and Edgey -_

_First things first, screw you both for messing with me like that. Not cool. Even if I can find it in my great big heart to forgive you._

_Second, if you're not coming for Thanksgiving, you'd better come up a different weekend. Maybe December before Christmas. Amy still wants to meet you clowns._

_Third, I've got a show coming up, so I've got to be up here for Thanksgiving. Wish me luck._

_Fourth, who are all these people?_

_Fifth. FINALLY._

_Love,_

_Larry Hayes_

(Here he paused, circled the last word, drew an arrow to one side, and wrote _Rethought long engagement. _Then another circle and arrow right below the first. _Rethought name._)

The signature still seemed to lack something, so he added one more line:

_Turnabout King_

* * *

October 31, 8:09pm

It wasn't quite the media blitz that a Gavinners album launch would have been, back in the day, but the Halloween party at the courthouse was no doubt going to provide even better fodder for the entertainment reports the next day, since the band's former frontman was going to be premiering his new material here. For invited guests only. Of course.

"Are you sure this is a good costume?"

"Wright, it's a wonderful costume. And no, you don't look like a ballet dancer. You look delicious."

A few happy weeks of procrastination and a burst of literal-mindedness meant that Phoenix had decided to dress as an actual firebird, with a Russian-looking tunic and trousers embroidered in flamelike oranges and golds and blues, with jagged wings to match. Trucy had outdone herself. And Vera and Klavier had teamed up with a makeup kit to turn his features shining and birdlike. His blue eyes in particular appeared almost unearthly now.

"You don't look too bad yourself." Miles had declared literalism to be a valid theme, and was dressed like a Roman centurion, elaborate sandals and cloak and all, though he'd forgone the helmet. "But I refuse to call you Miles Gloriosus tonight, so don't get your hopes up."

His - _you know, there isn't a good word for it_- his love's voice dropped. "Why hope? I have what I wanted." They shared a brief, careful kiss, for the sake of the firebird makeup, then stepped out of the side hallway into the courtroom. The first people they recognized were Pearl and Maya Fey. Both were wearing glasses and fake facial hair, of all things, and Maya also had on a beret.

"Maya, I'm really happy you put your foot down to the elders about visiting more often. It's great to see you. But I have no idea what you're supposed to be."

Pearl broke in. "It's like that old TV show! It's a joke, because we're Feys. We're the MythBusters."

Phoenix couldn't help but laugh as he hugged them. "So long as you don't mind doing a lot of explaining."

Maya inhaled for a sharp retort, but then got seriously distracted by something over his shoulder. He turned around and saw Miles already mesmerized by the same thing: an enormous, muscular figure in vaguely Japanese armor, the right half of which shone with a high polish and the left half of which was blackened.

"The Steel Ronin."

He chuckled. "Yes, Miles, I realize that it's incredibly, incredibly cool, but just remember that it's Will in there, okay?"

The two grown-up-I-swear fans intercepted the armor in the hallway, already talking, and Will's blunt, good-natured face appeared when the mask came off. Maya in particular was being verbose. "I can't believe the reboot is actually happening! This is going to be so, so amazing."

Ema went by in a bridal gown and veil, followed by Spencer Langley in a brown suit, a trench coat, and sneakers.

"Pearls, have you seen Trucy yet?"

"No, not yet. She called my phone earlier. I guess they had to dress you up first?"

He felt a little guilty. "Did she tell you what she was going to be?"

"Yup. But she didn't say I could tell YOU."

"Well, did she say NOT to?"

"No, but I won't risk it. Sorry!" The tiny girl grinned, stuck her tongue out, and ran over to Maya, who with Miles was on her way back. "Let's eat something!"

The mediums turned out to be the only ones who were hungry, so a moment later he and Miles were standing alone again. "Shall we?"

"Certainly." They proceeded into the courtroom itself - the adjunct one, at least. None of his trials or Apollo's had been held here, and that was fine with him.

Black and purple banners hung from the railings and the balconies, and to his surprise the judge was sitting at the bench, dressed in his typical black robes and conversing animatedly with a group of people.

"I can't tell if that's really meta or just oblivious."

"It's quantum. Don't change it by asking."

"Edgeworth, do YOU know what they're all dressing up as?"

"Well. I did finally tell them about your nickname for them."

"You did? What would you do THAT for?!"

"Because you can't go around secretly calling them the Flopsy Bunnies forever."

"Miles, so help me, if my teenage daughter shows up dressed as a bunny girl in fishnets, you are going to find me a convent to put her in and then you will get the Prosecutor's Office to pay for some sessions with Dr. Crow for ME."

"Oh, relax. Trucy is perfectly decent. See?" And there she was, hurrying through the crowd toward them.

She was dressed as a magician's rabbit, in white tie and tails plus white bunny ears and a rubber rabbit nose with whiskers. She had bunny slippers on her feet and white gloves over her hands, and was carrying a top hat from which peeked a doll dressed like she normally was.

"Hi, Daddy! Like my costume?"

"It's wonderful. And something of a relief. Where are the others?"

Trucy stuck her tongue out at him the way Pearl had, and pointed at the door. Vera and Kay had just come in, and neither of them had gone the Playboy route either. Vera had painted her face to resemble a real rabbit's, at least if real rabbits came in blue, with wide dark eyes and a velvety nose, and she had on the full-length plush suit that he'd rather expected at least one of them to wear. Kay Faraday was wearing a little black dress and things that looked like shaggy grey mukluks, and had a truly horrible monstrous rabbit mask pulled up onto her forehead.

"Sexy Frank. I don't think I would have come up with that one."

Edgeworth, who of course knew her much better, said, "She has a rather fearless sense of humor."

"She might give me nightmares."

"She's done me the favor of a lifetime, remember...but don't mention nightmares where she can hear you or she'll do it on purpose."

"Thanks for the warning." Trucy had loved Kay instantly, and what's more had finally had found, in her, someone she could teach magic tricks to with respectable results. "Is that Apollo?"

The next set of rabbit ears to catch his attention were white and indeed perched on the head of the short, businesslike attorney. He had on formal gloves like Trucy's, a patterned brocade vest, and a distinctly Victorian suit ("Is that one of your cravats?" "Yes.") and was holding a large pocketwatch whose chain led to his vest pocket.

"Polly?"

The young man looked impudent. "Yes, sir. I'm late."

"Bunnies, Polly? **Really?**"

"Yes, sir. When you think about it, it's certainly a versatile idea."

"Is your boyfriend Alice, then?"

"No, he's - well, there he is."

_Oh, for God's sake. I suppose someone had to be the fishnet one. _Klavier had on a very tightly fitting, and very loosely woven, black mesh shirt with his black leather jacket and typical black leather pants, and flashed a wicked look from under a pair of fuzzy BLACK bunny ears.

"Herr Wright! Thank you for the marvelous costume idea!"

"Just LOOKING at you is going to corrupt someone."

"Then you had better look at the person you would rather be corrupted by, no?" And Klavier pulled Apollo off into the crowd after the girls.

Gumshoe went by, dressed as a film noir detective with a very snazzy hat. Maggey hung on his arm, in a slinky dress and stockings with seams up the backs, cradling what looked like a bird paperweight with one arm.

Franziska, dressed as a rather shiny and billowy pirate, posed for pictures with Adrian, who was wearing an enormous, low-cut satiny gown with a laced bodice.

"Pirate and wench?"

"The cover of a romance novel."

And then a young woman appeared in front of them in a very familiar orange leather jacket. "Nick? Miles? Remember me?"

He did. "Nina?"

"Someone didn't forget everything over summer break. Good boy, Nicky. Larry deputized me to come down to this thing, since I was visiting my folks anyway. He sent this for you, besides providing the costume." She handed over a more or less flat package wrapped in worn brown paper. "Good to see you guys again. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see if I can find a decent drink somewhere and if I can talk Ema Skye into being my friend. Total platonic girl crush." And off she went.

They looked at each other. "Do you want to open this now?"

"Do we have anywhere to put it once we do?"

"Do we have anywhere to put it if we don't?"

"Good point." Miles led the way out into the hall and halfway up a flight of stairs, stopping on a landing smoothed by thousands upon thousands of footsteps to gaze out over the wildly dressed crowd. Phoenix joined him at the wooden banister.

"Who's the redhead Will Powers is chatting up? She looks familiar."

"Just a moment, please. Centurions don't wear glasses."

"MINE does." He almost expected Miles to say something acidic, but instead the silver-haired man looked bemused, and touched.

"It is still so surprisingly good to hear you say those things."

"What do you mean, surprisingly?"

"I mean that - that for so long, even the most quotidian elements of being with you were pure fantasy for me. And here you are, dressed like a myth, and it's real. I was so sure we would...never. You remain surprising."

"That's very complicated. I love you."

"Present tense?"

"Present tense, present company." He let go of the railing and moved behind Miles to put an arm around him. For the space of a minute, they both closed their eyes. Warmth and gratitude.

Then Miles fished his glasses out, put them on, looked down, and laughed. "No wonder she looks familiar. She's my old secretary."

"She seems to like him. And by the way, your old secretary looks fantastic in a snake-print dress."

"If you have time to ogle women ("Woman!"), you have time to assuage my curiosity about this gift from Larry."

"All right here...what's this?" The mass of brown paper contained two flat panels of metal, worked in Larry's memorable style, but he wasn't sure what he was looking at. Vague dark rectangular shapes hung down like curtains over a purple background that grew darker the further down you looked. Tiny red spangles marked the corners of the rectangles, and one side of each panel was bordered with a light surface expertly weathered and stained to resemble wood instead of metal. He looked at them in confusion, and held them out towards Miles.

And Miles seemed equally perplexed, but only for an instant. "What...oh, my. This way." He started up the rest of the stairs.

"What?"

"You'll understand!" And Miles led him to the large window that looked out at the nearby skyline, and turned the panels upside down - right side up, really - and held one next to the other, and he did.

The black rectangles, now that they were at the bottom of the image, were nothing but the buildings around the courthouse, in precisely the right order and proportions. The red spangles were the aircraft warning lights on the corner of the roofs. And the purple fade was a disappearing sunset. The wooden strips were the frame of this window, and unless they were held side by side, you'd never know it. Half of the view in each, as if two people were standing next to each other.

"He's been to the courthouse enough."

"He has."

"As if we weren't sufficiently indebted to him as it was."

"I emailed back and forth with him yesterday. We'll go visit in December."

"That seems like a wait."

"It does. But Thalassa wants to tell Trucy and Apollo before Thanksgiving."

"You tell me this now?"

"At least I remembered."

"Is it very wrong of me to enjoy the idea of someone else being subject to bunny plots?"

"You know, not in this case."

At that moment, the building's PA system bonged to announce that the concert was about to begin, and would everyone please gather in the courtroom? They descended the stairs, meeting Maya again in the crush of the hall, and went where they were told. A projection of Vera's design for the album cover now hung in the air above the judge's bench: Klavier's silhouette as he tried to balance on Trucy's slackline, shown as one black shape against another, with a violet outline between. And as the lights dimmed and the room quieted, the singer appeared on the witness stand with an acoustic guitar.

_I want to take my shadow off_  
_and send him on his way,_  
_have light around me everywhere -_  
_then maybe I could say..._

_Since memory is history_  
_and history is sin_  
_I might enjoy amnesia_  
_and perhaps you'd let me in_

_But I wouldn't be where I could hear you_  
_Innocent, but nowhere near you_  
_So…we're this way, or no way at all_

_I want to take my shadow off_  
_and hang it in your tree_  
_and wait beneath your window_  
_for the truth to shine on me_

_But here's what I learned about love_  
_When push came to shove came to shove_  
_We fell down before we could fall_  
_The tools that I use_  
_The stones in your shoes_  
_We were this way or no way at all_

* * *

December 3, 10:31am

A little red dot appeared at the bottom of the hill. The color looked right, but he waited until he could resolve the shape into the right kind of car before he called to the woman who was reading at the table.

"Amy!"

"Is that them?" She'd been sitting crosslegged on top of the chair, and she had to untangle her feet from the long cotton skirt before stepping down and hurrying out onto the deck of the small house.

By now the car was close enough that he could almost make out the figures in the front seat, and Larry raised his arm and waved a few times. He was about to drop his hand to his side again when the car's horn responded in the same rhythm as his wave.

"Hey!" He redoubled his efforts, leaning over the railing, and an arm in a white sleeve reached out of the passenger side window and waved back, as the horn continued to beep. He thought he could see a dog now, bouncing around in the back seat.

In his memory later, it all seemed to be one sensation: the feel of the muscles stretching as he waved, the horn sounding, the sparkle of the sun on the hillside ivy, the peripheral feeling of Amy leaning and waving beside him, and the smile that would not leave his face as his friends drew closer, curve by curve on the narrow road.

* * *

Author's Note:

OMG. First off, a tremendous thank you to all of you who've been reading. Turnabout Toast is only the second fic I've finished, and I didn't quite have an idea of the volume of this when I began it. KatrinaKaiba, Natalie, ziraulo, Celestine, shugo sora, 6GunSally, LittleDuck, Vee, Lis Rose, marmellow, Jiggywidit, Clemy, WhiteBunny, Nana, Awestruck, Conspectus, Dalmatian, and others, I'm very, very grateful to you all. And if I know nothing of your existence but you've read it too, hey! Nice to meet you! Drop me a line!

A few tidbits, mostly regarding locations, for anyone who might be interested:

- The Sonoma County Airport really is named for Charles M. Schulz, the _Peanuts_ cartoonist, and Snoopy is on the seal.

- Many of the places around Los Angeles are real: Dockweiler Beach, Union Station and its pretzel stand (and its bright blue airport bus), Olvera Street (Trucy's skirt, too), the South Coast Botanic Garden, Canter's, Versailles Cuban Restaurant, the little bakery in the South Bay, Famima!, Caltech, the statue and poem on Figueroa, Little Tokyo, the burger place, and the Music Center.

- And some of the places elsewhere, such as Calipatria State Prison and False Creek.

- The song that Klavier plays, but that Edgeworth can't quite recognize, is Dire Straits' "Private Investigations." Feel free to ignore that if you're appalled by the idea.

- Jarritos are tasty. So is the curry casserole.

- The Halloween costume references are of course out-of-date, given when the series takes place, but I really couldn't resist.

I do have the beginnings of a shorter and fluffier sequel bouncing around in my head, though it's likely to be a few weeks before I can get started with it.

And I typed pretty much this whole thing ON MY PHONE. Just wanted to say that.

Cheers!


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